JIMMY CARTER ON GOLDSTONE AND GAZA

November 7, 2009 at 9:52 am (Gaza, Israel, Opinion, Palestine, War Crimes)

jimmy-carter

Goldstone and Gaza

 

By Jimmy Carter

 

This op-ed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was published Nov. 5, 2009, by the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.


Judge Richard Goldstone and the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict have issued a report about Gaza that is strongly critical of both Israel and Hamas for their violations of human rights. On Wednesday, a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly began a debate on whether to refer the report to the Security Council.


In January 2009 rudimentary rockets had been launched from Gaza toward nearby Jewish communities, and Israel had wreaked havoc with bombs, missiles, and ground invading forces. Judge Goldstone’s claim is that they are both guilty of “crimes against humanity.” Predictably, both the accused parties have denounced the report as biased and inaccurate.


It is good to remember that Judge Goldstone, from South Africa, is one of the world’s most widely respected jurists, with an impeccable record of wisdom, honesty and integrity. He is a devout Jew and has long been known as a fervent defender of Israel’s right to peace and security.


In April 2008 I personally visited Sderot and Ashkelon, Israeli communities near enough to have been hit by rockets fired from within Gaza. While there, I condemned these indiscriminate attacks on civilians as acts of terrorism, and I consider their condemnation by Judge Goldstone to be justified.


A year later, after the Israeli attack on Gaza, I was able to examine the damage done to the small and heavily populated area, surrounded by an impenetrable wall, with its gates tightly controlled. Knowing of the ability of Israeli forces, often using U.S. weapons, to strike targets with pinpoint accuracy, it was difficult to understand or explain the destruction of hospitals, schools, prisons, United Nations facilities, small factories and repair shops, agricultural processing plants and almost 40,000 homes.


The Goldstone committee examined closely the cause of deaths of the 1,387 Palestinians who perished, and the degree of damage to the various areas. The conclusion was that the civilian areas were targeted and the devastation was deliberate. Again, the criticism of Israel in the Goldstone report is justified.


He has called on the United States, Israel and others who dispute the accuracy of the report to conduct an independent investigation of their own. Hamas leaders have announced that their investigation is under way, but Israel has rejected Judge Goldstone’s request.


Putting this dispute aside, it is important to examine present circumstances and the need to prevent further suffering. The rocket fire from Gaza is now being severely restrained, perhaps because of the certainty of Israeli retaliation, but the punishment of the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza continues. Now and for the past 10 months, Israel has not permitted cement, lumber, panes of glass, or other building materials to pass their entry points into Gaza. Several hundred thousand homeless people suffered through last winter in a few tents, under plastic sheets, or huddled in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. The weather was warmer when I was there several months later, but the description of suffering through the winter cold was heartbreaking.


Another winter is now approaching, and neither the Israelis nor the international community has taken steps to alleviate the Gazans’ plight. United Nations agencies and leaders in the European community have offered to provide an avenue of channeling funds and building materials directly to the people in need, completely bypassing the Hamas political leaders. These officials, both in Gaza and in Damascus, have assured me that they would accept this arrangement.


There would be no chance for the misuse of such assistance for weapons, military fortifications, or other non-humanitarian purposes.


I was informed recently by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that he has pledged $1 billion, and other Arab leaders have added an additional $300 million for this purpose. There is little doubt that other nations would also be generous.

Without ascribing blame to either of the disputing parties, it is imperative that the United States and the international community take steps to assure that the rebuilding of Gaza be commenced, and without delay. The cries of homeless and freezing people demand relief.

Jimmy Carter was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and is a member of the Elders.

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1001 WAYS THAT ZIONISTS USE TO TAKE OVER LAND AND DISTRACT ATTENTION AT THE SAME TIME…..

November 7, 2009 at 9:13 am (Associate Post, Israel, Occupation, Palestine)

Image by Abonoon

فلسطين

Sad week in review

By Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

One of these days, I would like to write a book to document the 1001 ways that Zionists use to take over land and distract attention at the same time.  In history we had false flag operations like the Lavon Affair (Israeli agents attacking Western Interests to blame it on Arab nationalists) and countless other incidents of creating mayhem to ensure distraction. More recently as more ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem goes on, the Lebanese government reveals collaboration between Israeli intelligence in South Lebanon nurtured and worked with extremist groups to fire Katyusha’s at Israel to keep the Northern front humming and give a bad name to Hezbollah.  Israel pirates a ship in International waters it claims were destined for Hezbollah.  Israeli agents infiltrate demonstrations wearing masks and insult Christians.  Israel recruits agents among sick Palestinians in Gaza desperate to leave to get treatment and use trickery to capture Palestinian men in compromising position and use the pictures to blackmail them into collaboration.  But mostly now, it is enough to keep scaring the Israeli public to stay on board with eth elites making billions off of impoverishing the average person (Israel builds massive security industries while more than 1/3rd of its population lives below the poverty line).

As Gideon Levy put it in Haaretz yesterday: “Every few weeks you have to sow fear, every few months you need to make threats, and once every year or two you have to have another little war. Blind cooperation between the defense establishment and the media holds the promise of another round of fighting. In that way, it’s possible to escape some of the blame from the Goldstone report and wallow in the conditions we love best: being the victim, feeling threatened and uniting in the face of the great external danger allegedly in the offing”[1]

Though he did not explain why the victimhood card is used: because without it, this whole project of bringing Jews from around the world to settle on stolen Palestinian land collapses. It would collapse because the truth would come out.  The truth that Zionism not only victimized the Palestinians (70% of us are refugees or displaced people) but also Jews [2]

The US State Department declared this week that “Israel dismally fails the requirements of a tolerant pluralistic society “[3]. Yet the US gives Israel the largest share of foreign aid, billions/year even as this is contrary to US law to support human rights violators.  The Israel-first lobby in Washington ensures the US arm-twists smaller nations to vote against International law.  Yet, even Israel’s endless distractions and the US power and might seem unable to stem the bad news for the racist apartheid regime.  The UN General assembly voted overwhelmingly to support the Goldstone report 114 votes in favor, 18 opposed and 44 abstentions..  Those of you in different countries should check how your country voted and write to thank them if voting yes or to ask for explanation for those spineless ones who voted no or abstain. History will not be kind to sweeping war crimes under the rug. Goldstone had written to congress to correct the distortions, outright lies, and inaccuracies that were in the resolution that was drafted for them by AIPAC trained congressional aids in fascist congressmen offices (Like Ross-Lehtinen) but the Goldstone letter was ignored.  Even the Gladstone report that they were condemning was not incorporated into the congressional record (otherwise future historians might see how stupid Congress is or maybe how stupid Congress thinks the public is).  So the AIPAC resolution condemning the Goldstone report (and thus supporting war crimes) passed by 9:1. 36 brave congressmen stand out and should be thanked for showing some backbone. (Action link [4])

Here in Palestine, we commemorated with sadness the November 2, 1917 horrific Balfour Decalration in which Britain promised Palestine to the European Zionist movement in order to secure help in getting the US to join WWI.

In other news, a US army officer who as a psychiatrist treated patients suffering after return from illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan (and was scheduled to be shipped there) went berserk and shot 13 of his comrades and injured 31.  The Zionists in the media are having a field day with this.  No one even mentioned on the religious persuasion or family background of the many hundreds of other Americans who engaged in similar kinds of mass-killing. In this case had he been Jewish American, Mexican American or anything else his background or religious beliefs would never have been mentioned.  I found it rather disgusting that outfits like the Associated Press engage in such smear campaigns.  All major Muslim American organizations issued statements condemning the attack. This is indeed a sad event; killing should be condemned by ALL but is also sad that some are allowed to exploit such events for political purposes.

In yet other news, Mahmoud Abbas declared that he will not run for the upcoming elections. In essence he is telling the US an Israel: you did not want to have a two state solution based on the road map to peace that you yourself drafted (and that calls for full freeze on settlement activity including “natural growth” and including occupied Jerusalem).  He is saying to them further that “if you do not want that, then my line of negotiations with you has indeed reached a dead end (he has actually been engaged in informal and formal negotiations for nearly three decades).  And let Fatah come up with a different line.” Now we could of course see a Fatah candidate who is more compliant with Israeli demands or we could see a more sober and realistic approach.  My recommendation to Fatah is to give up on the “authority” and on the illusionary “two states” and begin the (yet hard) process of educating friends and foes about the value of a democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine.  As I argued in my last book, that will bring a durable peace instead of the charade of the current “peace process” (I know the peace process industry will not be happy with us finally beginning to choke off their main source of income and power).

On more uplifting news, on the anniversary of the Berlin wall collapse, Palestinians breached the apartheid wall knocking down one of its concrete segments (video here [5]). And residents of Aida refugee camp got to see the rest of Palestine. Rich Wiles wrote: “Um Qassim was born over 70 years ago in the village of Al Kabu. Her early childhood was spent amongst the clean air and fresh water of this Palestinian village. In 1948 everything changed for Um Qassim as it did for all Palestinians, and today she is one of the 4,500 residents of Aida Camp…I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here forever. It’s so, so, beautiful, and it’s still ours…”[6] And a final action, please sign the petition Sign the petition to Norway’s University of Trondheim to Boycott Israel (sign at link below [7].

A luta continua–the struggle goes on.

Notes

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126077.html

[2] see Lenni Brenner’s article “The Zionist Operation Was A Success, The Jewish Patients Died” http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/the-zionist-operation-was-a-success-the-jewish-patients-died/

[3] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126286.html

[4] http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=3517 and see how your congressperson voted and write to them all http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll838.xml

[5] see Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xh4ouc8Lac

[6] more at  http://hullpsc.blogspot.com/

[77] http://www.petitiononline.com/boycott9/petition.html

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AMERICA’S OLD UGLY FACE

November 7, 2009 at 8:52 am (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, Israel, Palestine)

MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS U.S

America’s old ugly face

The US is still playing fast and loose with its commitments on Israeli-Palestinian peace, reports Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

Speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in West Jerusalem Saturday, 31 October, visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that Israel was making “unprecedented concessions” on the issue of settlements. “What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy on settlements is unprecedented in the context of negotiations.”

She also claimed that a freeze on settlement building had not been a precondition for peace talks in the past. Clinton reiterated the same old platitudes about America’s commitment to a “comprehensive peace agreement” and the need for the resumption of peace talks as soon as possible. Netanyahu, visibly pleased by Clinton’s remarks, said “we think we should sit around that negotiating table right away.” He termed Palestinian insistence on a settlement expansion freeze a “new Palestinian policy that doesn’t advance peace”.

Clinton’s remarks sent shockwaves in Ramallah, prompting some Palestinian officials to accuse the Obama administration of “fully and brazenly embracing the Israeli position” and “reneging on erstwhile pledges to commit Israel to freeze all settlement expansion activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem”. “There can be no excuse for the continuation of settlements, which is really the main obstacle in the way of any credible peace process,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abu Rudeina added: “A settlement freeze and acknowledging the terms of reference is the only way towards peace negotiations. Settlement expansion is illegitimate and it is not possible to accept any justification for the continuation of settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

Other Palestinian officials spoke more angrily of “America’s old ugly face”, with one key official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying “there is not a chance in hell that Obama will force Israel to end the occupation or even freeze the construction of more settlements. I think we are deceiving ourselves. We must stop being bamboozled like little children. The US is simply Israel’s guardian, protector and defender. In many aspects, the US is more Zionist and more inimical to our cause and people than Israel itself.”

Earlier in Abu Dhabi, Abbas reasserted his opposition to any resumption of peace talks with Israel without a freeze on Jewish settlement construction. In his uncharacteristically firm stand on this issue, Abbas was unanimously backed by Fatah and all other PLO factions. Even Hamas, Abbas’s domestic foe, voiced the hope that Abbas would stick to this position and resist American bullying.

Abbas’s firm stand on the issue of settlement expansion may have surprised Clinton, prompting the secretary of state to tone down her pro-Israeli remarks. Clinton was quoted as saying during an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Morocco Monday, 2 November, that although it was true that Israel offered unprecedented concessions on the issue of settlements, it didn’t mean that the US was satisfied with the Israeli stance. However, Clinton’s statement was largely viewed by Palestinian and Arab observers as “too weak to undo the damage already done”.

The PA’s fury over Clinton’s remarks is understandable. The continued survival and relevance of the PA depends to a large extent on the success of the peace process. Indeed, if the peace process fails to deliver, the PA itself loses its raison d’être. Moreover, the PA as well as many in the Arab world gave President Obama the benefit of the doubt when he pledged in his landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on 4 June that his administration would adopt a fair and balanced approach towards the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hence present disappointment and bitterness.

Still more important is the fact that Abbas himself has no other alternative strategy in case the peace process with Israel meets a dead-end, as most Palestinians and Arabs believe it has. Abbas is also worried that by returning to peace talks with Israel without getting settlement expansion halted, at least for the duration of prospective talks, he would incur the wrath of his people. One PA official intimated that any “serious concession by Abbas to Netanyahu at this time, such agreeing to return to the negotiating table without preconditions, would make him lose face before his people”. “I think most Palestinians would view this as a scandalous betrayal and a sort of a selling out. The Goldstone episode would be small in comparison,” he added.

There is no doubt that Hamas is keenly watching Abbas’s behaviour. Two weeks ago Abbas called for presidential and legislative elections to be organised in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. However, with the peace process going nowhere and with the Obama administration cajoling and coercing the Palestinian leader to accommodate Israeli intransigence, Abbas might very well find himself backed into a corner. It is uncertain if Abbas will be able to sustain his current position, namely his refusal to resume peace talks without a freeze on settlements. After all, Abbas stands at the helm of a weak entity whose very financial and political survival depends to a large extent on the goodwill of the US and EU, as well as Israel.

Moreover, even if the Palestinian leader decided to bite the bullet and return to the negotiating table, everyone in the region and beyond knows well that the talks would be more of the same, given past failed efforts to reach a lasting agreement with Israel. The reason is clear. Israel, especially under the current right-wing government, will never voluntarily agree to give up the spoils of the 1967 war and is extremely unlikely to agree to withdraw from East Jerusalem, allow for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees or, indeed, dismantle hundreds of Jewish colonies established by successive Israeli governments on Palestinian land occupied more than 42 years ago.

In fact, many Palestinians, even within Abbas’s own Fatah party, are not enthusiastic about resuming talks with Israel under the present “unfavourable” conditions. Jebril Rajoub, a member of Fatah’s Executive Committee, pointed out that “for negotiations to succeed, there has to be an agreed-upon endgame. But if talks are to be viewed by the Israelis and the Americans as an occasion for bullying the Palestinians to surrender, then to hell with peace talks.”

To be sure, the Palestinians are not the only ones getting disillusioned by the Obama administration’s weakness vis-à-vis Israel.

The noted Israeli journalist Gideon Levy accused the US of “sucking up to Israel”. Writing in Haaretz newspaper on 1 November, Levy argued that the American approach of begging Israel to offer concessions for peace was counterproductive and would achieve no results. “Israel is the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians. Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don’t change the tone, nothing will change. As long as Israel feels the US is in its pocket, and that America’s automatic veto will save it from condemnation and sanctions, that it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world’s policeman making a sound, it will continue in its ways.”

 

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WHY I AM NOT A ZIONIST

November 6, 2009 at 8:57 am (Activism, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, War Crimes, zionism)


By Kevin Coval
Build equality, not walls. (ActiveStills)

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I’d written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently, I and the poet I was to read with at the J Street conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

We decided to hold our reading anyway in Washington, DC during J Street’s inaugural conference at an alternative location. We were hosted by the Busboys and Poets space. The room filled with a spectrum of ideas. We read our poems and during the question and answer period, no one was shouted down. Not the Israeli army refusenik, not the liberal Zionist apologist, not the Palestinian student who asked us to include more about the Palestinian people in our poems, not just the land or idea of nation-state, a point beautifully made and incredibly profound. No one shouted down moderator Laila al-Arian, a brilliant journalist and activist, whose father was a Palestinian political prisoner in America, now freed because of his daughter’s persistence. The crowd was cool and civil, though broad in opinion.

Since the second Palestinian intifada I have thought, written and spoken about these issues, but over the course of these last several weeks, I have arrived at a new beginning. Prior to now, I muddled this issue in complexity. But I have come to realize it is actually simple and clear. I am a Jewish-American man in solidarity with the Palestinian people. I am in solidarity with Israeli and American and All people who work and risk their lives and livelihood for justice. I am not restricted to working within the confines of the Jewish-American community. Justice and resistance to imperialism is a global, human concern for all people. For Jews, yes, but not Jews alone. For Palestinians, yes, but not Palestinians alone. It will take us all to push and demand governments and corporate interests to create fair, equitable living conditions. It will take all peoples to hold history accountable for the atrocities that occur.

This is an analogy. America celebrates Columbus day even though Columbus and American settlers killed, enslaved and pushed indigenous peoples off land they lived on. Tragically, indigenous peoples have been nearly wiped out of existence and pushed to the furthest margins of our culture that revels in amnesia. Main St., mainstream American culture does not expect Native Americans to celebrate Columbus, nor care nor know nor imagine if they do or not. Native Americans are not a demographic population Hallmark cares to account for. It is preposterous to think Jews would celebrate Kristallnacht, the night of glass when SS troops stormed and terrorized their German ghettos. In Israel, Independence Day is called Yom Haatzmaut. Communities gather to play music, dance and watch fireworks. The Chief Rabbinate has declared this day a Jewish holiday in which prayers should be said. But Palestinians remember 1948 and the formation of the State of Israel as al-Nakba, the Catastrophe. A day of murder, displacement and forced Diaspora. A day families are torn apart and ripped away from their homes. A state-sanctioned celebration of their dehumanization and second-class citizenship.

For this reason alone, I cannot believe in the integrity of the Zionist project. It’s built on bodies and lies. It denies the existence of people and a people. One of its slogans, rooted in the same malicious revisionism as American history and Holocaust denial, is a land without people, for a people without land. Columbus didn’t discover shit. He enacted the desires of empire and the fetishization of “discovery.” The formation of the State of Israel is rooted in blood and deceit, is the same story as all colonies built in the name of imperialism, capitalism and dehumanization. Therefore, I am not Zionist.

I am not pro-Israel because in January Israel murdered more than 1,400 Palestinians. They bombed schools and hospitals. They bulldozed homes and bodies. Israel builds a separation wall, as Germany did, as the United States does between here and Mexico, as the rich do between themselves and the rest of us. I am not a believer in borders. I have been mistaken for Italian, Puerto Rican, Arab and Muslim, but I am a suburban Jew who sought out hip-hop cultural space across red lines and Chicago segregation. I learned borders are to be contended and crossed. Israel believes in borders. Israel practices apartheid. On one side, irrigated lawns and swimming pools in illegal Israeli settlements. On the other side, Palestinian disenfranchisement, denied access to drinking water, medical assistance, jobs, the ability to earn an income or vote in the country that governs them, that limits their movement with passports, checkpoints and curfews and closes them into open-air prisons. I cannot be in favor of these practices, nor the state that enacts them. These practices are to be resisted, protested and pushed against. Those whose bodies are legislated against, contained, detained and maimed by state-sanctioned terror are to be stood with and listened to.

This week has provided clarity. This is not a complex issue. There is the brutality of governments and the need for the liberation of a people, all people. I am a Jewish person who stands with Palestinian people relegated to second-class citizenship and Israeli soldiers who refuse to enact racist militarism. I am not a nationalist; therefore I am not a Zionist. I am against the oppression of any person and people. I am not a builder of walls. I believe in equity and democratic practice, therefore I am not pro-Israel. I am an advocate for truth, justice and reconciliation. I believe in this. I believe in this now. I believe in the work ahead.

Kevin Coval is the author of Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica) and Everyday People and co-founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival


zionism is not healthy

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THE END OF OBAMA’S GOOD WILL TOWARD PALESTINE?

November 5, 2009 at 8:36 pm (Associate Post, Barack Obama, Israel, Palestine)

What’s Behind This Shift of Policy?
By Khalid Amayreh

 

Journalist — Occupied Palestine

Image
The unbreakable US-Israeli ties gradually curtail the image of America Obama tries to build in the Middle East. (Reuters Photo)

In his landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, on June 4, President Obama vowed to adopt a fair approach toward the Arab-Israel conflict. He criticized the Israeli policy of settlement expansion and repression against Palestinians, and promised to get Israel to freeze all settlement activities in the West Bank and Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) in order to facilitate the resumption of a more genuine peace process.

However, six months later, the Obama Administration’s approach toward the enduring Palestinian crisis seems more or less a mere re-cloning of George Bush’s policies.

Bush enthusiastically embraced Israeli settlement aggrandizement, blaming Palestinians for the failure of peace efforts.

Similarly, it seems that the Obama Administration is effectively succumbing to the Zionist hegemony in the United States as is evident from the latest statements by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Speaking during a joint press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in occupied Al-Quds on October 31, Clinton lauded the Israeli policy on the settlements, describing alleged Israeli concessions in this regard as “unprecedented”.

“What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy [of]settlements is unprecedented in the context of negotiations,” said Clinton.

She also claimed that a freeze on building settlements had not been a precondition for peace talks in the past.

Moreover, Clinton reiterated the same old platitudes about America’s commitment to a “comprehensive peace agreement” and the need for the resumption of peace talks as soon as possible.

Why Policy Changed?

It is not hard to know why the Obama Administration is reneging on erstwhile promises made during the American President’s speech in Cairo.

Obama had probably thought, mistakenly of course, that he would be able to convince Israel to rein its gluttonous rapacity for more Palestinian land.

Indeed, the fact that all the strenuous efforts done by the Middle East presidential envoy George Mitchell, to get Israel to freeze its frantic settlement drive in the West Bank, have utterly failed to put a dent in the Israeli behavior.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who normally covers Israeli army violations of Palestinian rights in the occupied territories, argued that as long as the United States continued to beg Israel for concessions for peace, there would be no peace.

Writing recently in the Ha’aretz newspaper, Levy pointed out that “Israel is the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing Palestinians.”

“Now is the time to say to the United States: enough flattery. If you do not change the tone, nothing will change. As long as Israel feels [that] the United States is in its pocket, and that America’s automatic veto will save it from condemnation and sanctions, [Israeli will not stop its policies],” asserted Levy.

“[And, as long as Israel] will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying, and imprisoning without the world’s policeman making a sound, it will continue its ways,” Added Levy.

It is uncertain if Obama and other members of his administration are willing to internalize Levy’s words, let alone act on them.

Hence, the crucial question which the man in the White House must answer sooner than later is whether he would be willing (and able) to enter into a “confrontation” with Israel if confrontation is what it takes to resolve the Palestinian issue and safeguard America’s vital interests in the Muslim world.

So far, all indications suggest that Obama is dreading such a prospective confrontation. The powerful Israeli lobby — along with the Congress, often described as an Israeli-occupied territory — would make the very thought of challenging Israel, even on American soil, a nightmarish idea.

Cannot Be More Arab than Arabs

Moreover, Obama cannot be expected to be more Arab than Arabs themselves. Indeed, while Israel and its supporters and allies fight tooth and nail trying to cajole and even bully the Obama administration to support Israel, Arab leaders, including the Palestinian leadership, content themselves with pleading with Washington to pressure Israel. This is done as if the American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, was based on charity rather than expediency and power politics.

This colossal impotence on the part of the Arab regimes has long convinced Washington that Arabs were not serious about the Palestinian cause, and that whatever show of support they occasionally display was only meant for public consumption.

A few years ago, it was reported that an American ambassador in one Arab country in the Gulf region confronted a high-ranking official from that country, asking him why Arab regimes keep ranting about the Palestinian tragedy while flinching from bringing America to task for its unrestricted and unlimited support of Israel. The Arab official reportedly asked the ambassador to change the subject.

In fact, the official Arab discourse vis-à-vis the Palestinian cause has become so scandalous and pathetic that most Arab regimes have come to view the Palestinian issue as a burden, not as a just national Arab-Muslim cause to be defended by all means available.

It is not a coincidence that a single non-Arab Middle Eastern Muslim state, namely Turkey, is now exerting more influence on Israel than all Arab states combined, prompting the Israeli regime to reconsider some of its policies and actions in deference to Ankara.

Unlike Arab leaderships, the Turkish one respects itself, and values the legitimacy that comes from the Turkish masses more than that which comes from the American or Western acceptance.

This is why a statement by a Turkish official carries more weight than all the futile rhetoric coming from Arab capitals, which is mostly intended to deceive and beguile the Arab masses.

What is Next?

The United States is likely to continue behaving as it has always behaved — namely to bully the weak Palestinian leadership of Mahmud Abbas to keep up the “eternal” peace talks with Israel.

These talks probably will continue until the second advent of the Messiah, when Israel has got all the time needed for liquidating the Palestinian cause, and when nothing is left to negotiate about.

We certainly do not know when the Messiah’s second coming will take place, but we do know that Israel has already killed all prospects for the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

External powers, especially in the West, may continue to be bamboozled by the foolish talk about the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with East Al-Quds as its capital, as if this prospect was still realistic. However, we who are in the eye of the storm cannot be deceived any longer. After all, we cannot belie our own eyes.

It is really lamentable and scandalous that the PA leadership continues to pretend that things are still all right, and that by reiterating the same tedious platitudes about the hatefulness of the Israeli occupation, things will somehow improve and the world will move to check the slow-motion Israeli holocaust against our people.

Unfortunately, this impotent discourse on the part of the Ramallah leadership is not only the product of powerlessness. It is also an expression of stupidity and a certain propensity to betray the Palestinian people, either because of accumulative frustration or political misjudgment.

The PA leadership has vowed to refuse to resume the nearly moribund peace process with Israel until it freezes all settlement activities. This is a correct posture that must be sustained.  However, Mr. Abbas should be served a caveat: do not retreat from this stance and then claim that “the Arabs told me do so”.

More to the point, the PA must insist that the “end game” be elucidated “before” any resumption of talks with Israel, because otherwise the Palestinian people would continue to revolve in the same empty circle, as they have been ever since the conclusion of the cursed Oslo Accords more than 16 years ago.

Moreover, if all other avenues are shut, then we must seriously think of dissolving the nominally autonomous authority, the PA, and revert to the pre-Oslo era, when the occupation appeared as it was in reality, without any layer of cosmetics as it does today.

Nonetheless, the Palestinian people must not give in to despair. Their cause is just and supported by millions of honest and free-minded people around the world. Without freedom and justice for Palestinians, there would be no peace and stability, not only in this region, but in the entire world as well.

Crusades remained in Palestine over a hundred years before they were vanquished and defeated. Israel, an entity based on oppression, ethnic cleansing, and racism, will eventually meet the same fate.

Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International.

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INTERNATIONAL LAW IS KEY

November 5, 2009 at 7:30 pm (Guest Post, Israel, Palestine, Right of Return, War Crimes)

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

Mother%20Palestine%20Right%20of%20Return

The Palestinians’ right of return challenges not only international law itself, but more so the political will of UN member states to act in the face of blatant racism and forced dispossession. A reply to Ahmed Badawi’s “Palestine: seize the initiative”.

By Sam Bahour

Ahmed Badawi is to be applauded for thinking out of the box and probing issues that are virtually taboos on each respective side of the Palestinian-Israeli divide.  That said, I must respectfully challenge the thesis that he presents.  My reading of his analysis is that he may have fallen into an Israeli trap – one that has been set ever since the late nineteenth century and has taken innumerous well-intended persons victim.

Towards the end of his analysis, Badawi makes a statement that is key to anyone serious about resolving this prolonged conflict; “In both societies, there is a dire need to rearticulate the national consensus in accordance with international law, which ultimately provides the best guarantee for their long-term security. Neither society can do this on its own.”  This is exactly what the Palestinians have been calling for for more than four decades.  It is not where the Palestinian position started, but it is where it has been ever since Israel militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.
Israel, on the other hand, has not only shunned international law ever since it’s founding, but continues to do so to this day, as we are all witnessing with their latest attempt to whitewash the entire Gaza onslaught that took place at the beginning of this year.  Even when one of the world’s most respected international law experts, Judge Richard Goldstone – who just happens to be a Jew, a Zionist, and a staunch supporter of the state of Israel – pointed to Israel as having carried out war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, he became, in Israel’s eyes, the enemy.

This is key. Israel’s national paranoia that the international community is bent on holding Israel to a higher standard than the rest of the world has provided an environment where Israel acts with impunity in full view of the entire global community.  If Israel brushes aside international law and third states, which as signatories to the relevant international conventions have an obligation to hold Israel accountable, accept this, then Palestinians will continue to be placed in a perpetual negative image – as can be seen even in the title of Badawi’s article: “…can the Palestinians seize the initiative?”  The burden is once again unduly dropped on the back of the Palestinians – a dispossessed and ‘protected people’ under international law.

Without a third party baseline, we are left with backroom wheeling and dealing, a model that no matter how well intentioned, will reflect the existing balance of power.  In other words, Israel, being the regional military might, and its key ally the US, will impose a resolution that fits their liking and narrow interests.  No need to note that such a “resolution” is no resolution at all, and thus the six decade conflict survives.

Israel’s trap is no longer a secret.  With the faithful assistance of the US, Israel refuses to accept international law as being applicable to the conflict. This includes any part of the conflict as well, whether it be refugees, settlement building, house demolitions, or even the actual military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip itself.  Peace seeking persons across the globe should not fall into the black hole of trying to imagine a resolution based solely on the here-and-now possibilities.  Ahmed Badawi and the two respected writers who replied to him, Oliver Ramsbotham and Gershon Baskin, all fall into this mindset of ignoring what’s right and wrong and using today’s balance of powers as the starting point.  This is a dangerous approach to conflict resolution in a region that tends to read history in 100-year episodes and is willing to sit it out if need be.  Without international law as the guiding framework, both sides will see the future tilting to their side.

Back to the two elements of the conflict that Badawi attempts to link: recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and the Palestinians right of return.

Two-thirds of all Palestinians are refugees.
The Palestinian refugees symbolize the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The refugee problem has its roots in what Israelis call their 1948 Israeli War of Independence, which ended in the mass displacement of over 750,000 Palestinian Arabs (approximately half of the Arab population). According to historical accounts of the War, including from recent Israeli historians, Jewish Zionist forces precipitated the flight of the Palestinian Arabs as part of a campaign of population transfer. The nascent state of Israel subsequently enacted laws to expropriate the refugees’ property and bar their return. The refugees were left homeless and destitute, mostly dependent on foreign aid for survival. The subsequent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip resulted in the further displacement of around 200,000 Palestinians.

It is interesting to note what the U.N. Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, reported on September 16, 1948, just one day before he was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the militant Zionist group Lehi (one of the three Jewish groups that merged to form the Israeli Defense Forces):

“No Settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged… It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and indeed, offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” (UN Doc. A/648, Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator in Palestine.)

“An offence against the principles of elemental justice.”  Instead of taking these words to heart and acting to stop this historical injustice, the world simply turned a blind eye because that was the desire of the powers that be at the time.  Palestinians continue to pay the price for this inaction. Today there are over 5.5 million Palestinian refugees and displaced persons who have never been allowed the choice to return to their homes and/or given redress for their losses.  The continued denial of their rights encapsulates the decades-long strife, disenfranchisement and dispossession the Palestinians have suffered.

Framing the Palestinian refugee issue within international law provides light at the end of the tunnel.  The state of Israel, which controls the key to solving the refugees’ quandary, has refused to recognize the right of the refugees to choose whether to return to their homes and denied any responsibility for the problem since 1948.  Israel has adopted this position in violation of international law, including UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirmed the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation.  The General Assembly has affirmed this most basic human right of the Palestinian refugees every year since 1948. Additionally, admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations (General Assembly Resolution 273 of May 11, 1949) requires Israel to comply with General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948.

If Palestinians are beginning to sound like a broken record in calling for their inalienable rights to be respected, then so be it.  I prefer that the Palestinians remain transfixed on resolving their plight using international law rather than falling for Israel’s trap of either living in the law of the jungle or as inferiors in a flawed and illegal political settlement which will only prolong the conflict.  Historians will record the issue of Palestinian refugees as one that challenged not only international law itself, but more so the political will of UN member states to act in the face of blatant racism and forced dispossession.

Israel has defended its refusal to concede the right of return on the grounds that the massive return of Palestinian refugees would spell the death of the Jewish state.  But admitting its historical responsibility to the Palestinian people and recognizing the rights of the refugees could in fact deliver security and prosperity to Israel. Badawi makes the same observation. Indeed, Israeli recognition of these basic principles would improve the atmosphere on the ground, help create more parity between the parties, and provide a fair framework for working out the details of a peace plan for resolving the conflict.

Ultimately, how Israeli citizens – all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish – agree to define themselves is their own concern.  Israel today cannot even answer the question of who is a Jew, let alone convince the world to accept the notion of being a “chosen people.” Under international law, recognition is not a perquisite to self-determination and sovereignty.  The Palestinian people, if not its leadership too, should be applauded for refusing to explicitly accept Israel as a Jewish state while Israel holds the entire Palestinian people, including, over 20% of Israel’s own citizenry, hostage to some yet unknown “final status solution.”

This issue of Israel as a Jewish state was posed and answered by none other than the PLO itself.  In a document from the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department titled, Palestinian Refugees (May 2008), they pose the question and answer as follows:
“Doesn’t the right of return threaten Israel’s “Jewish character”?”

“Allowing Muslims and Christians to choose to return to their homes or not does not negate Jewish historical attachment to Israel nor does it deny the rights of Jews to immigrate to Israel. The right of return is essentially a right of choice and seeks only to address historic injustices and affirms the rights of the indigenous non-Jewish population.”

This type of approach to our inevitable joint future is an enormous vote for tolerance on behalf of Palestinians, even after what Israel has, and is, putting them through.  This is the kind of Palestinian stance that Israel successfully obscures from the eyes of onlookers.  This same, genuine commitment to tolerance was reiterated over and over again in a collection of oral histories that I co-edited titled, Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (Interlink Publishing Group, 1994).

Israel’s first Prime Minister said that “the old [refugees] will die, and the young will forget”.  A few years ago, Israel’s last Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explicitly stated that Palestinians must, “relinquish your demand for the realization of the right of return.”
Following these ill- fated desires, Israel has sought to deny or delay addressing the refugee issue.  However, the amount of blood shed since 1948 proves the fallacy and the immorality of the Israeli position. Adhering to it will only lead to more bloodshed.

The Palestinian-Israeli issue is beyond negotiations via wordsmithing. The rights of the Palestinian people, and in particular the refugees, should be recognized alongside any legitimate rights of the Israeli people. Ultimately, it is through the evenhanded application of international legitimacy that we may be able to get out of the current stalemate and reach real grounds for peace.  Otherwise, the failed Israeli practice of “might is right” will prevail, as will the prolonged needless death and destruction on all sides.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant living in the besieged Palestinian City of El-Bireh in the West Bank.

4 Comments

IT STARTED WITH PING PONG

November 5, 2009 at 7:01 am (Activism, Illegal Settlements, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Sports)

This is how it started…..

bush sharon

Bush-Sharon: Ping Pong expanding Israeli illegal settlements

(Jalal Al-Rifa’i, Ad Dustour, 8/23/04).

Who would have ever imagined that baseball would be used as a tool to support oppression? Ping Pong was once used in China to facilitate normal relations between the East and the West…. in Israel to support illegal settlements…. and now baseball clubs are joining in.

New York Mets called on to cancel settlement fundraiser
Press release, Adalah-NY, 4 November 2009

 

Eleven organizations from the US, Palestine and Israel have called on baseball’s New York Mets to cancel a 21 November dinner at the Caesars Club at Citi Field for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. The dinner is a fundraiser for Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank City of Hebron. In a letter sent to the Mets on 3 November, the groups said, “The New York Mets will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and the Obama administration’s call for a freeze in settlement construction, and that actively promote racial discrimination, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron.” Seven hundred Israeli settlers, living amidst 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron, are expanding their hold on the historic old city by driving out the Palestinian residents.The groups added that “It would be a tragic irony for an event funding Israeli settlers’ violent actions and discriminatory policies against Palestinians to be held at Caesars Club which, according to the Mets, “sits directly on top of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda,” which was named “in honor of Jackie Robinson, the … great American who broke baseball’s color barrier.” The Mets and Major League Baseball promote Robinson’s legacy, including Robinson’s value of “Justice: Treating all people fairly, no matter who they are.” Mets owner Fred Wilpon has explained in the past that, as a 16-year-old, meeting Jackie Robinson was an experience that never left him. “As a kid, a nothing, he treated me with all of that dignity that he treated everyone else in his life.”

On the Hebron Fund webpage, clicking on the symbol which says “Give to Hebron” leads to a donations page on the website for the Jewish Community of Hebron which says, among other things, “keep Hebron Jewish for the Jewish people.” In a report on Hebron, the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and ACRI labeled the demands of Hebron’s settlers as “racist.” Hebron settlement leader Moshe Levinger, praised in a Hebron Fund dinner video, has been quoted saying,”The Arabs know to behave like good boys around us.” Hebron Fund Executive Director Yossi Baumol also made very derogatory comments about Arabs in a 2007 interview.

The signers of the letter include Adalah-NY, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), CODEPINK Women for Peace, Gush Shalom (Israel), Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (Palestine), US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and WESPAC Foundation. The letter was cced and sent to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, who has a history of involvement with Major League Baseball, and Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s wife.

The letter explains that reviewing last year’s and this year’s Hebron Fund dinner shows that some dinner honorees support violence and terrorizing Palestinians. In 1990, Noam Arnon, who is to be honored at the dinner, called three Israelis who were convicted of killing three Arabs and maiming two Palestinian mayors in car bombings “heroes.” In a video on the Hebron Fund website, 2008 dinner honoree Myrna Zisman pays tribute to Hebron settler Yifat Alkoby. Alkoby became famous worldwide in 2006 when she was videotaped in Hebron terrorizing and calling a Palestinian woman and girl “whores” who were caged inside their own home as protection from settler attacks. In another video featuring 2008 dinner honorees, three children who appear to be the honorees’ children are briefly shown holding guns and smiling.

All Israeli settlements violate international law, according to a broad international consensus. The Hebron Fund’s dinner invitation says, “Join us in support of Hebron and in protest of today’s building freeze in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” In a September 2008 radio interview, the Hebron Fund’s Yossi Baumol explained, “There are real facts on the ground that are created by people helping the Hebron Fund and coming to our dinners.”

The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently highlighted the Hebron Fund and noted that “critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns. A search of IRS records identified 28 US charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004 and 2007.” The Hebron Fund has been the subject of complaints to the IRS regarding its tax-exempt status. The complaints request investigations of allegations that it raises funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli organization Gush Shalom recently urged the National Lawyers Guild, an American organization, to encourage American tax authorities to strip US non-profits that support Israeli settlements of their tax-exempt status.

 



The following short video shows exactly what the fundraiser would support…..

4 Comments

NEW BREED OF HOLOCAUST DENIER

November 4, 2009 at 1:17 pm (Guest Post, Holocaust denial, Israel, Palestine)

wrh2

Michael%20Rivero's%20Must%20Read%20!%20(Ben%20Heine)

GOLDSTONE DENIAL
By Michael Rivero

Having burned out the pejorative phrase “anti-Semite” though overuse and endless misapplication, Israel’s defenders of late have been resorting to their last and most powerful rhetorical weapon of mass distraction, “Holocaust Denier”, to silence critics or at the very least to deprive them of an objective audience ready to give the critic a fair hearing.

“Holocaust Denier” is being hurled hither and yon, and the reality is that hardly anybody being labeled a “holocaust denier” denies anything. They just want to ask a few specific questions about specific historical events, or simply defend the right of all people in this post “Saddam has nookular bombs” era to re-examine everything we have ever been taught by the state-operated schools and media. Nobody is denying that war crimes took place. But that there have been hoaxes and false claims made in the aftermath of WW2 is beyond question.

However, ’sauce for the goose’ etc. and I have decided that from here on out, I will identify all defenders of Israel’s actions in Palestine and all those who are fighting to block the bringing of war crimes charges against Israel for Operation CAST LEAD as “Goldstone Deniers”.

I feel that this is perfectly appropriate because the “Holocaust Denier” label is used to claim that the denier is trying to conceal NAZI Germany’s atrocities. Therefore, those who are trying to conceal Israel’s atrocities should be accorded the same treatment. After all, they are indeed trying to deny the atrocities which took place inside Palestine.

So, that is it. They are all “Goldstone Deniers” from here on out!

 

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

palestinianholocaust

15 Comments

WHIPPING ABBAS INTO LINE ….. CLINTON STYLE

November 4, 2009 at 10:36 am (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Authority)

Clinton tells Abbas: either you budge to Israel, or else

By Khalid Amayreh

abbas-clinton1256990390737-4-0.jpg

The latest visit by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to Occupied Palestine seems to have effectively terminated whatever hopes the Palestinians and other Arabs may have pinned on the Obama administration to adopt an evenhanded approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In his public policy discourse toward the Muslim world, which culminated in his Cairo speech on 4 June, President Obama gave a certain impression that his administration would resist Israeli insolence and arrogance of power and introduce a semblance of fairness into its policy toward the Palestinian issue.

Obama also pledged to get Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a precondition for resuming stalled peace talks between the apartheid Israeli regime and the weak Palestinian Authority (PA).

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that all Obama’s assertions and promises were mostly disingenuous rhetoric that is meant for public relations consumption.

Clinton, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem Saturday night, stopped short of completely endorsing the Israeli settlement policy, describing Israeli “concessions” as “unprecedented.”

What Clinton seemed to be saying was that the proverbial ball was in the Palestinians’ court and that Israel did or was doing its part of the deal.

This means, according to Clinton’s logic, that it is now the Palestinians’ turn to reciprocate by agreeing to resume the vague, undefined, and open-ended talks with Israel, probably until Israel is able to devour the remainder of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, at which point Clinton or another American Secretary of State, would urge the Palestinians “to be realistic and accept reality.”

Clinton realizes well that with every day passing, Israel devours a fresh chunk of the West Bank. However, she not only fails to say what ought to be said, namely that this is unfair and unacceptable, but also goes as far as demanding that the Palestinians come to terms with Israel’s “right” to steal Palestinian land under the deceptive rubric of a peace process that has more to do with deception and land theft in broad daylight, than with real peace or even real efforts to make peace.

Clinton, who as New York senator had proven that her ethical standards were sub-minimal at best, has actually unmasked the Obama administration’s face, a face that seems to differ little from that of the previous Bush administration.

The continued theft of Palestinian land in al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) and the rest of the West Bank is undoubtedly a brazen act of rape. And instead of demanding that this rape be immediately terminated, Clinton is asking the victim to be considerate and accommodate the feelings and desires of the licentious attacker.

The PA leadership did well by rejecting American bullying. Doing otherwise would have made the PA and its president Mahmoud Abbas incur another spate of anger and indignation among Palestinians, both at home and in the Diaspora.

However, it is till uncertain if Abbas’s rejection of Clinton’s pandering to the extremist Israeli leadership was merely a tactical move or a sustainable position which the PA would uphold in the face of Israeli insolence and the manifestly conspiratorial American posture.

Abbas has been vowing not to resume talks with Israel unless and until the Zionist regime freezes all settlement expansion activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Resisting American pressure does enjoy wide support among Palestinians. In fact, it was one of the rarest instances where the American-backed PA chairman adopted a stand consistent with the Palestinian public opinion.

This is why reneging on or retreating from this position, even under American pressure, would cost Abbas and his Fatah organization dearly in terms of public support.

Needless to say, the latest American betrayal underscores the futility of counting on the US to pressure Israel to end the occupation that started in 1967 and allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Indeed, it is quite plausible to reason that if the US is not able, even if willing, to get Israel to stop the construction of a settler building in East Jerusalem, it would be foolhardy for the Palestinians to expect the same US to get Israel to give up the occupied territories of 1967, allow for the repatriation of the refugees and dismantle Jewish colonies.

Hence, it is crucial that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims disallow themselves to continue being duped and bamboozled by American prevarications and procrastinations which only allows Israel to have more time to create more and more facts on the ground in the West Bank.

But it is uncertain if the Abbas-Fayyad leadership in Ramallah will be able to retain their current position vis-à-vis the settlement issue.

Abbas can’t really be given the benefit of the doubt. After all, he stands at the helm of an authority that can’t survive one month without American and Western aid, which is actually nothing less than bribery money aimed at placating the Palestinians to keep quiet in the face of continued Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

Moreover, the PA leadership proved ad nauseam that it values the legitimacy that comes from Israeli and American acceptance more than that which comes from the Palestinian people’s acceptance.

This is why Abbas must be constantly monitored and reminded that retreating from the current stance on settlements would generate a revolt against him and his authority.

The Palestinian people are always willing to sacrifice for the sake of their freedom. Palestinians would never ever commit adultery with their enduring national cause and inalienable rights for the sake of promised economic prosperity and worldly comfort.

Nonetheless, the PA will have to adopt a series of tangible measures to demonstrate to the American administration that the Palestinians wouldn’t just budge to Israel’s blackmailing tactics and arrogance of power.

If necessary, the PA must show a serious willingness to completely dissolve itself and return to the pre-Oslo era if the US keeps insisting on imposing the Israeli will on our people.

I know that many PA operatives have vested interests in maintaining the status quo. However, it should be well known to everyone concerned that Palestinian national interests in dumping the Israeli occupation in the dustbin of history absolutely override the interests of a few robber barons in swelling their bank accounts with more dollars and shekels.

In addition, the PA should display more national responsibility and statesmanship by forming a collective leadership that would lead the Palestinian people through the treacherous precipices facing our people.

After all, the PA constantly succumbed to American and western pressure in the hope that “fighting and isolating the extremists” would convince Israel and its allies to end the occupation.

Now, that the PA has discovered that the American-conceived and Israeli-sustained rift with Hamas was only meant, from the American view point at least, to weaken the Palestinian national front vis-à-vis Israel, the same PA should be courageous enough to reconsider its disgraceful subservience to the US and Israel and seek immediate reconciliation with Hamas and other patriotic-minded Palestinian forces.

Abbas: you are facing a grave danger. Your head has already hit the ceiling of the hyena’s cave.

3 Comments

BLOG YOUR WAY TO DEMOCRACY AND MAKE MONEY AT IT

November 4, 2009 at 9:02 am (Blogging, Corrupt Politics, Middle East)

Here’ya go guys…… finally a chance to ‘rake in’ the bucks….
…..No money for healthcare in the USA….
…..No money for education in the USA….
…..No money for housing in the USA….

BUT
FIVE MILLION DOLLARS IS AVAILABLE TO BLOG!

Digital future: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces $5M to blog, text democracy in Mideast

By Richard Sisk

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will dispatch digital experts to the region to work with community groups on blogging, texting and building websites in the Mideast and North Africa.

Senna/Getty

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will dispatch digital experts to the region to work with community groups on blogging, texting and building websites in the Mideast and North Africa.

WASHINGTON – Blog your way to democracy, Secretary of State Clinton suggested to Arab leaders on Tuesday.

At a “Forum for the Future” in Morocco, Clinton said “our goal is to listen, learn, and discover new ways that we can work as partners for the good of the people that we represent.”

With $5 million in seed money, Clinton said the U.S. will dispatch digital experts to the region to work with community groups on blogging, texting and building websites in the Mideast and North Africa.

The initiative is focused on “listening and embracing others’ ideas rather than simply imposing our own,” Clinton said in a statement.

The proposal had overtones of Obama’s community organizing roots but also harkened back to the “listening tour” that kicked off Clinton’s successful 2000 Senate campaign.

U.S. officials said Clinton’s announcement was intended as a follow-up to the “New Beginning” in the Mideast and North Africa that Obama launched in his June 4 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

They also brushed off criticism that the program would duplicate social work better done by non-governmental agencies.

Clinton’s goal was to promote democracy, a U.S. official said, and “isn’t that the essential problem in the Arab world?”

Critics of Clinton and the Obama administration agreed the high-tech program was worth attempting, after they pointed out that the Forum for the Future was a project started by former President George W. Bush.

Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under Bush, said that “especially in dictatorships, which abound in the region, this kind of project can help overcome censorship and state control of the media, and it’s a very good idea.”

After the meetings in Morocco, which centered on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Clinton canceled her flight home to go to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Clinton was expected to seek help from Mubarak in calming Arab fears the U.S. is easing pressure on Israel to stop new settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Mubarak asked for the meeting to discuss Clinton’s failed attempts to jump-start negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Abul Gheit noted that the peace process was “now passing into a critical stage,” the official MENA news agency said.

 

Source

4 Comments

LATEST ‘HAPPENINGS’ IN JERUSALEM AND A CALL FOR ACTION

November 4, 2009 at 8:49 am (Activism, Guest Post, Home Demolitions, Illegal Settlements, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Soldier Brutality, Status of Jerusalem, zionist harassment)

demolition

By Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

Yesterday and while politicians fret over terms like “slow-down” or “restraint” on illegal settlement activities, the Israeli authorities demolished more homes and evicted  some 30 people in Jerusalem. One room that is part of a demolished building housed a handicapped women whom neighbors and friends had helped get modifications done to facilitate her life.  Tonight we heard a rather depressing report from an organizer in AlBustan Neighborhood in Silwan (Occupied Jerusalem) where 88 homes (housing 1500 people, 60% of them children) are slated for demolition to create a “King David park”.  In a normal city, parks are created to serve the residents of the area not to ethnically cleanse them.  While just nearby there are spaces for parks to build but Israel’s plan for Jerusalem call for cleansing it of its Arab inhabitants so that there is nothing left to negotiate about and it becomes a Jewish city (capital of Israel forever). The political plan for judaicizing this area is actually laid out in the “Jerusalem 2020″ plan. After building two rings of settlements around Jerusalem (and now to be connected with light railways that make a network of “facts on the ground”), the plans for this closest ring of settlements, parks, synagogues, and museums is yet the most destructive to the local inhabitants.  That Israel is violating International law (Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council resolutions) seems to be only met with muffled protests from the International community. We are told of a seven year old boy whose mother notices bulging backpack going to school and back, when opened, the bag contained his toys.  When asked about it it turns out that the child had overheard his parents talking about the demolition order on their home and he wanted to make sure that if he comes back from school and finds his home demolished, his most valuable toys would be saved.  My heart breaks for these families.  But I feel sad for the Zionist “believers” who are generating so much pain in a new generation of children suffering under this brutal colonizing state.  How is reconciliation to be achieved when 7 million people were made refugees or displaced people so far (and more on the way).  Doesn’t International law support resistance to colonization? And is this resistance just the responsibility of the victims or also of all decent, thinking human beings regardless of their religion.

In other news, a Jewish American terrorist settler, Jack (aka Yaakov) Teitel who had been on a killing and destruction rampage against Palestinians for over 12 years (he had killed Isa Mahrama in 1997 and was released without any prison term) was arrested now by Israeli police because he is alleged to have planned to target leftist and gay Jews! Palestinian life and property continues to be cheap in this unholy Land.

Action for US citizens: Oppose the AIPAC initiated congressional resolution against the Goldstone report.  Demand accountability and support for International law http://www.capwiz.com/adc/issues/alert/?alertid=14280606


Lest we forget: Pictures from the Israeli war crimes in Gaza (Palestinian Center for Human Rights)

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/photos_de-08.html

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/campaigns/english/gaza_2008/images.html


Names and pictures of some of the Israeli war criminals responsible for these atrocities:

http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/01/26/names-and-photos-of-israeli-war-criminals-in-gaza


Video: Israeli social TV presents: Olives under occupation (on Israeli distruction andf theft of Olive trees)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHmR59siII


The Jewish National Fund: Confiscating Bedouin Lands; Report by Yeela Raanan, RCUV

http://alternativenews.org/english/2251-the-jewish-national-fund-confiscating-bedouin-lands.html

BTW, the Bethlehem University student I told you about in a previous action alert was handcuffed, blindfolded and transported to Gaza just two months before she was scheduled to finish her degree. Yet, another way Israel makes, per Hillary Clinton, “unprecedented” steps for   “peace”.

2 Comments

WEDNESDAY’S TOONS ~~ TWO VIEWS OF OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY

November 4, 2009 at 8:22 am (Afghanistan, Associate Post, Barack Obama, Cartoons, Iraq War, Pakistan)

‘The Never Ending Story’…….

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

Image by Bendib

click on images to enlarge

6 Comments

HAMAS: DON’T ALLOW SHAM ELECTIONS TO TAKE PLACE

November 3, 2009 at 7:59 pm (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, Fatah, Hamas, Palestine, Palestinian Authority)

Hamas: don't allow sham elections to take placeBy Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

Anyone listening to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas these days would think the man is a paragon of democracy and liberty.  Abbas, who has remained at the helm of the PA despite the expiration of his term in office, has been exhorting Palestinians to prepare for “presidential and legislative elections” which he called a “constitutional imperative.”

However, a deeper look into Abbas’s behaviors at home shows that the PA Chairman is not really interested in holding true, free and honest elections. After all, actions speak louder than words.

Today, Abbas is presiding over a ruthless despotic regime where the level of repression is unprecedented since the start of the Israeli Occupation in 1967.

There is a nearly total absence of human rights and civil liberties. As to the rule of law, it is virtually paralyzed. Some human rights groups which wronged  citizens used to turn to for help have closed their doors, apparently under pressure from the PA security agencies.

A few weeks ago, I met a young Palestinian teacher who was fired from his  job by the security apparatus for reasons he is yet to know or understand.

“I don’t know why they did it. I am a good teacher and had been lawfully appointed as a teacher.  Suddenly, I was notified by the headmaster that I was fired for undisclosed reasons.”

The teacher, a father of three children, said he suspected that the main reason for his dismissal had to do with his relatives who happened to be outspoken critics of the PA regime.
In addition to the  dismissal, the PA is refusing to pay him thousands of dollars of unpaid salaries which he says could help him reorganize his life.

The teacher appealed to European Union (EU) and other donors to see to it that the PA treats its citizens with a semblance of justice, dignity and decency.

“Don’t enable the PA to deny its own citizens their basic human rights. Don’t enable the PA to oppress, savage and humiliate us.”

The teacher who hails from the Hebron region says he was already contemplating emigrating to Scandinavia to escape “the Fatah tyranny.”

“I am not a member of Hamas, I have never been a member of Hamas. I am not even a particularly religious person. Yet, I was hounded and eventually fired from my job on no ground other than the fact that some of my relatives are religious people.

“I have been a teacher for three years, and now they’ve decided to jettison  me like an old pair of shoes. They wouldn’t even pay me my dues which could help me re-organize my life. So what am I supposed to do? Become a collaborator with the Shin Beth? Or go to Jewish settlements to find work to support my family? Or emigrate to Australia or Canada or any other country.”

In truth, that teacher, who was reluctant to give his identity for fear of further retaliation,  epitomizes hundreds  of civil servants who have been unceremoniously fired from their jobs on suspicion of sympathizing with Hamas.  However,  their efforts to find justice have been to no avail as the PA establishment has enacted “emergency laws” stating that the security agencies had the right to fire any public employee without having to justify the decision.

In other words, one has to worship the government if one is interested in keeping  his or her  job.

There is a name for such a government. It is called a fascist government, straight and simple.

The absence of justice  in the West Bank goes hand in hand with the absence of civil liberties including freedom of expression.

Today, any gesture of opposition to the American-backed regime is reported to the security agency. As many as 9,000 people, mostly suspected Hamas sympathizers,  have been arrested by these agencies in the West Bank since 2007.  Many or most of the detainees are subjected to physical and psychological torture. Indeed, at least ten detainees died under brutal torture in police facilities maintained thanks to American and European tax-payers’ money.

This writer personally knows many young people who have been  arrested and maltreated for hoisting the green Islamic banner bearing the Islamic article of faith. Others were subjected to harsh interrogation over which political party they had voted for in the January-2006 elections.

At colleges throughout the West Bank, half of the students have been made to inform on the other half of the student population. This is  really poisoning the college atmosphere and creating deep mistrust among students.

Similarly, newly-recruited  PA informers all over the West Bank have replaced, or more correctly, augmented Shin Beth collaborators, in carrying out the “job” of informing on any opposition to the Ramallah regime and the Israel occupation. Some of the informers even inform on people frequenting mosques especially those attending the dawn prayers.
In short, there is a real virulent police-state atmosphere prevailing throughout  the West Bank where the security agencies are playing a dominant role.

Hence, one really wonders  if free and honest elections can be held under these conditions.

We have to be honest about this issue because free elections require true freedom which would enable citizens to choose candidates without the  fear of getting arrested, or subjected to reprisals by the government and its security arms.

More to the point, how can true elections be held when one party, e.g. Fatah,  is allowed to campaign freely while another party, e.g. Hamas,  is denied that right?

Can Hamas, for example, organize a single rally in the West Bank today? Are there guarantees that the PA security agencies wouldn’t riddle with  bullets Hamas supporters and then claim that the Islamists “were trying to carry out a coup against Palestinian legitimacy.”?

One more point, let us suppose that Hamas would win the elections, that is if and when truly free elections were held. Would Fatah then accept the results? Would the so-called International Quartet (UN, US, EU and Russia) accept the outcome? Would Gen. Keith Dayton, the de facto ruler of the West Bank,  and his bosses and subordinates accept the outcome? Would Hamas be recognized as the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people?

More importantly, would Israel allow Hamas to take part in the elections? And would the Israeli Occupation army refrain from arresting Hamas’s candidates on the ground that Israel, not the PA, had the final say with regard to  the elections?

These are legitimate questions that must be answered before the organization of elections.

If the Palestinian masses don’t get satisfactory answers to these  legitimate and most logical questions, then the Palestinian people will  just repeat the same bitter experience which started immediately after the 2006-elections when millions of Palestinians were severely punished for electing Hamas.

In truth, it seems that nothing really has changed ever since, as the Quartet continues to insist that Hamas recognize the“legitimacy” of  Israel, even without a reciprocal Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.

Indeed, the persistence of the blockade of the Gaza Strip, along with Israel’s refusal to allow building material to get through to Gaza, is a clarion proof that the elections designated for 24 January  are not being pursued in order to allow the Palestinian people to choose a new leadership but rather in order to get rid of Hamas by concocting and falsifying elections.

Hamas must never allow this to happen.

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ONE DAY IN HILLARY’S LIFE….. PRESS REPORTS

November 3, 2009 at 1:12 pm (Corrupt Politics, Israel, Media, Palestine)

MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS U.S

Who was it that said that ‘white man speaks with forked tongue’? ….. Shouldn’t it be ‘white Madam’?

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The Palestinian government has accused the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, of undermining progress towards Middle East peace talks after she praised Israel for offering to curb construction of some Jewish settlements. After meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders during a visit on Saturday, Clinton called for an unconditional resumption of peace talks and welcomed Israel’s offer of a slowdown in settlement activity.


It’s not peace, Madam Secretary
Nov 2, 2009 – 1:42:08 PM

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All of a sudden, after 10 months and who knows how many meetings, freezing construction in the settlements is no longer a precondition for negotiations. True, until now the Palestinians were willing to negotiate the end of the occupation while their partner made it worse. That is how we have gone from 109,000 settlers – not including East Jerusalem – when the Oslo Accords were signed 16 years ago to more than 300,000 today.

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Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that Israel must make greater efforts to ensure peace with the Palestinians, a day after supporting Israel on the contentious settlements issue. Speaking in Morocco while meeting Arab foreign ministers on Monday, Clinton said that Washington remains opposed to Israeli settlements. She said that “positive steps” taken by the Palestinians towards peace, such as improved security in the occupied West Bank, “should be met by positive steps from Israel”.

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TUESDAY’S TOON ~~ US AID TO PAKISTAN

November 3, 2009 at 11:43 am (Associate Post, Cartoons, Pakistan)

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

click on image to enlarge

2 Comments

THE INHUMANITY OF ZIONISM

November 3, 2009 at 11:28 am (DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, Home Demolitions, Illegal Evictions, Illegal Settlements, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Settler Violence, zionist harassment)

Image by Ismael Shammout

cold and worry

We enjoyed summer weather in Jerusalem until about a week ago. The days were hot, the evenings were cool…. but not cold. There wasn’t a sign of rain. This literally changed overnight as cold winds and rain turned the clock into winter mode.

That’s when the Israeli authorities decided to destroy the tent that an evicted family was living in. The family in question is not alone, Israel has plans to continue with illegal evictions and home demolitions in Occupied East Jerusalem. The United Nations is calling on Israel to immediately stop demolishing Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem.The UN says 60,000 Palestinians may be at risk of being forcibly evicted.Israel says the houses are built without construction permits, which Palestinians say are almost impossible to obtain.
The following video shows the plight of just one family, a video that Hillary obviously had no time to watch during her ‘trip’ to this area.



In fact, Hillary’s positions on settlement expansion gives Israel to go ahead with their plans. Obama’s promises are hollow as are the calls of the United Nations. Palestinians have endured these situatins for more than six decades, the world has watched their suffering in silence since day one.

This week alone, according to a Maan News report, Two Israeli soldiers were injured in a rock-throwing incident as they participated in a home demolition on Tuesday morning in occupied East Jerusalem.According to local sources, Israeli military forces and a demolition crew from the Jerusalem Municipality entered the East Jerusalem village of Sur Bahir, south of the Old City, and destroyed the two-story house of Nimir Ali Nimir. The 300 square meter house was home to 11 people.Outraged at the destruction of the house, stone-throwing Palestinian demonstrators confronted the Israeli officers, mildly injuring two.Israeli authorities said that the house was built with out a construction permit from the Israeli-controlled municipality. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem say the permits are nearly impossible to obtain.

Meanwhile, in the in As-Salam neighborhood in East Jerusalem, bulldozers demolished a 60 square meter house owned by Khamis At-Tahhan, which housed nine members of his family.

Residents say Israel has demolished the same house twice before, also citing a lack of building permits, but the owner continues to re-build in defiance of the discriminatory laws.

To the outsider, it might appear that the ‘rock throwing Palestinians’ are the ones in the wrong. How dare they defend the homes that have rightfully belonged to them for generations. How dare they confront Israeli soldiers.

But, look at the situation with open eyes and an open heart…. we are talking about people here, people whose very lives have been put on hold since day one of the occupation. People whose families have been destroyed….. how long can this be tolerated? The Israeli ‘game plan’ now is to rid the land of these people….. get rid of them completely and the bad publicity stops. Silence the press, imprison the opposition, all part of the ‘final solution’.

Lets get back to the family I mentioned at the beginning of this post; they are not just sitting back in silence, and they are not alone…. a report FROM….

Evicted Sheikh Jarrah families demonstrate outside of US consulate

Sheikh Jarrah DemoOn Monday 2 November 2009 between 11 and 12am, a quiet demonstration was held outside the USA consulate in East Jerusalem, close to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Coinciding with USA foreign secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to Israel, the demonstration asked for the USA to apply more pressure on Israel and stop the home confiscations and evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah.

The demonstration gathered about 30-40 demonstrators and was covered by a number of press reporters. In addition to Sheikh Jarrah families, participant organizations included Ta’ayush, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, International Solidarity Movement, Michigan Peace Team, and Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. A police vehicle with heavily armed police officers arrived after five minutes and maintained a peripheral position for the remainder of the demonstration.

And where was Hillary? She was too busy pulling the plug on the ‘peace process’ to concern herself with the realities of the region. She will report back to her administration that Israel is right and Palestine is wrong. She will have overlooked the fact that the very settlers that have been replacing the evicted Palestinians are in one way or another connected to the murderer that was arrested earlier in the week. She will overlook the fact that these settlers are associated with the outlawed kach movement, an organisation listed as a terrorist organisation in the United States. The logic seems to be that it is better to have a Jewish terrorist (or potential one) occupy the Occupied Territories than make way for the establishment of a Palestinian State. How sick is that? BUT…. that is what is happening.

Americans will continue reading about ‘Islamic terror’ in their press…. they will not see the truth about the zioterror that is taking over Israel, slowly but surely. The blinders they wear will shield them from the truth, but the truth will get out there and THE TRUTH SHALL SET US FREE!


Related post….. read HERE about the latest incidents.

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CAN A CRIMINAL STATE CONTROL ITS CRIMINALS?

November 2, 2009 at 10:50 am (Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Editorial, Extremism, Israel)

weapons

Yaakov Teitel’s weapons’ cache.
Photo: Shin Bet Israel Security Agency

With criminals literally in complete control of the government, how are they expected to control those that are still on the loose? Under the Law of Return, any Jew can move to Israel and become a citizen automatically. ANY JEW! There have been exceptions to that rule, but in most cases the process works smoothly once the individual verifies his ‘roots’.

Under this ‘Law’, we have seen the admittance of some of the lowest forms of humanity, these included kahane and goldstein.  Another newcomer sits as Israel’s Foreign Minister, still another sits in a Paris prison as I write this.

We have recently witnessed a number of Government Ministers cancel trips abroad for fear they would be prosecuted as war criminals. This is the reality of the State of Israel, it is a state that is under the control of criminals. Just what are they expected to do?

The following two reports deal with the latest incident…. just one more of many…..

Was Teitel’s criminal record screened before his aliya?

As the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israel Police announced Sunday the arrest of US immigrant Ya’acov Teitel, 37, on suspicion of deadly terror shootings and bombings spanning over a decade, the question was once again raised as to whether the authorities need to more carefully check the backgrounds of potential immigrants.

According to the Israeli authorities, the former Florida resident was known to the US authorities and wanted for his alleged involvement in violent crimes there, prior to his aliya in 2000.

Despite this suspicious past, neither the Interior Ministry nor the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) could confirm Sunday whether there had been knowledge of Teitel’s alleged crimes abroad before he was allowed to immigrate.

A spokesman for JAFI did say, however, that potential olim coming from the West are asked only to declare whether they have a criminal record, but are not required to produce police documents proving or disproving this fact.

Source

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‘There are Jewish terrorists still at large in Israel’

A senior Shin Bet official said Jewish terrorists that have not been caught are still at large and may be planning future attacks, Israel Radio reported on Monday.The official’s comments follow the announcement on Sunday that settler Yaakov Tytell was arrested last month for allegedly killing two Palestinians and carrying out a string of bomb attacks.

Tytell is not mentally unstable, said the Shin Bet official, who described him as an extremist who firmly believes in his ideology and who acted carefully, decisively and with sophistication.

 

The official added that Tytell functioned on the outermost fringes of society and said he cannot be compared with other Jewish terrorists, including the Jewish underground and Yigal Amir, who assassinated former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 14 years ago.”You don’t need an underground with 100 people in order to cause grave damage,” the Shin Bet official said.

Tytell was arrested on October 7 in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof after posting signs around town praising the attack on the Tel Aviv gay center. He was apprehended with a loaded gun.

Police found additional weapons and explosives at his home and another concealed location.

Tytell was remanded and interrogated for about three weeks without access to legal representation, a step that was approved by various courts, including the High Court of Justice.

 


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Also read the following, written by Joseph Dana

How dangerous are these people?

When I was in high school, I studied with a teacher from the West Bank settlement of Shiloh. He was an American guy who had moved to the West Bank out of a discovery of religion and deep feelings of Jewish ownership over the land of the West Bank. One shabbat I joined him at his settlement and stayed at his neighbors house. Waking up in the morning, I asked the family where their son was, as I was staying in his bed for the night. They informed me that he was in jail as a result of being caught walking to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem with explosives in an attempt to blow up the Dome of the Rock in order that a third temple could be built. The extremists are everywhere in the West Bank and one does not have to look deeply to find people, both in groups and individuals, that are ready to use extreme violence for religious and political reasons. I know that most settlers would classify themselves as peace loving people who believe in the right of Jews to have control of the West Bank. That is well and good but the bottom line is that there is a group of absolute extremists within the greater settler community that operate with the full knowledge of the settler community. These people would not be able to do what they do without the full knowledge of the great community and ultimately the State of Israel itself. Does anyone think that the Yesha council will come out with a statement saying that a real soul searching needs to take place within the settler community as a result of the arrest of this extremist?

The internal security services of Israel have arrested an American born Israeli settler who is responsible for at least two murders of Palestinians in the West Bank as well as a number of attacks against Jews including the leftist Zeev Sternhall. Avi Issacharoff makes the point that this settler’s mistake was targeting Jews as well as Palestinians because crimes against Palestinians rarely go to trial despite the efforts of Ta’ayush and Yesh Din. There is ample evidence on this website to support Issacharoff’s claim.

Settlers Near the West Bank Outpost of AsahelSettlers Near the West Bank Outpost of Asahel

What is a surprise in the news today is the amount of security forces that were needed in taking this guy into court as well as his treatment in prison which until now has been reserved for leftists and Palestinians. When he was plucked of a Jerusalem street, he was armed and security forces found arms caches in his house and another location. It is amazing that these types of people, extremist settlers that is, are some of the only people in the country that are allowed to carry weapons around. Perhaps, that would be a sensible place to begin an overhaul of our policy with these people.

As someone who deals with settlers on a regular basis, I hope that the government increases their crackdown on these types of people. Not all of the settlers are as extreme as this one caught today but there is a definite support base, like in most terrorist environments, that allows this activity to continue with implicit support. The coming days should feature a number of settlers and settler groups arguing that this person was somehow crazy and not like them. The sad truth, as far as I can tell based on experience with these people, is that he is not far off from the rest of the “proud settler” community that uses the state and its resources to continue to put us all on their path to insanity and implosion.

 

 

Source

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HILLARY STRIKES FATAL BLOW TO THE ‘PEACE PROCESS’

November 2, 2009 at 7:35 am (Corrupt Politics, Israel, Palestine, Peace Process)

Fourteen years later, almost to the exact day the Oslo Agreements were ‘murdered’, the latest ‘attempts’ for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East suffer the same fate…
MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS U.S

Photo: AP

Netanyahu Scores Victory as US Abandons All Settlement Demands

Peace Process Likely Dead After Clinton Touts Israel’s Commitment

By Jason Ditz

In May, the Obama Administration was pointedly demanding that the Israeli government abandon all construction in all of its settlements, insisting that no exceptions could be tolerated and the move was a must for peace.

It took less than six months for that position to be abandoned in its entirety. The hawkish Netanyahu government is now relishing a major victory over the US as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Israel, which has angrily rejected those demands, for their commitment to the peace process.

It seems that President Obama’s ambition for Palestinian statehood has given way, in the face of furious anti-Obama protests across Israel, to a 180 degree turn back to the unquestioningly pro-Israel position of the past several US presidents.

Now the Palestinian Authority, once eagerly praising the Obama Administration for pressing Israel, says that Clinton is actually undermining efforts to resume the stalled talks. Since Israel has repeatly ruled out any peace talks with the PA in recent weeks, there wasn’t much to undermine, but their frustration is clear.

Source

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WATCH MARY RIZZO LIVE ON PRESS TV TONIGHT

November 2, 2009 at 6:22 am (Activism, Current Affairs, Interview, Palestine)

mary rizzo

Mary Rizzo will be interviewed by Lauren Booth again
on Press TV’s show about Palestine (seasonal viruses permitting!)
There are some great guests, including the absolutely wonderful
Brenda Heard of Friends of Lebanon with Hussein, a child victim of a
toy-shaped cluster bomb. Some of the arguments are cluster bombs and
un-conventional weapons used by Israel in Palestine and Lebanon and
imprisonment of Palestinian children. The show is aired several times
on the satellite channel, and then it is available for viewing on the
Press TV site.

http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510533 that is
the link to the programme’s site.

this is the page of the channel’s scheduled programming:
http://www.presstv.ir/programs/schedule.aspx (19:05 Tues, 12:35 Weds UK TIME)Just in case you are not aware of who Mary is, read THIS interview that was published recently.

 



She is a true and dedicated friend of the Palestinian cause, and I’m proud to say a close friend of mine as well.

 

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RIGHT WINGERS ‘WELCOME’ SWEDISH JOURNALIST TO ISRAEL

November 1, 2009 at 2:07 pm (Israel, Media, zionist harassment)

bostrom

Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom.
(Tomer Appelbaum)

Rightists confront ‘IDF organ trafficking’ reporter at Israel airport
By Gili Izikovich

Dozens of right-wing activists on Sunday confronted a Swedish journalist who accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs from Palestinians, shouting at him upon his arrival in Israel at Ben Gurion airport.

The rightists waved banners bearing slogans against Donald Bostrom, who will be a guest of the Dimona Media Conference on Monday, and called for him to be expelled from Israel.

In his article, which was published in August, Bostrom attempted to tie Jewish criminals who trafficked in organs in New Jersey to Palestinian claims that Israel had removed organs from Palestinians killed by IDF soldiers.

Bostrom will be interviewed at the conference on Monday by the anchor of Channel 2’s Friday night news show, Yair Lapid.

Although no specific threats were received, Bostrom will be accompanied by a bodyguard throughout his stay, and the conference will make special security arrangements to prepare for potential protests.

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, who is also minister for the development of the Negev and Galilee, announced on Saturday that he would not come to the event and would drop his support for it because of Bostrom’s presence. The move will cost the conference NIS 200,000.

Organizers said the journalist is expected to visit Israeli towns in the vicinity of Gaza and other local conflict areas.

Bostrom’s article, published in the popular Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, set off a media frenzy in Israel, and Bostrom has been accused of disseminating “a blood libel” against Jews.

Sweden’s Ministry of Justice announced in August that it would look into complaints alleging that the article was racist and amounted to incitement against Israel.



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