Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.But silence is impossible.Silence screams.Silence is a message,just as doing nothing is an act.Let who you are ring out & resonatein every word & every deed.Yes, become who you are.There's no sidestepping your own beingor your own responsibility.What you do is who you are.You are your own comeuppance.You become your own message.You are the message.In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
See how many places Israel and your Uncle Sam have raped.
Click, to download this book...
http://web.mit.edu/thistle/thugs/thugs.pdf"Thugs: A History of the U.S. Empire"
"Appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support of the Zionist Government"
In the "New York Times", November 1, 1970.
It reports that the Israeli Air Force Commander was already lecturing at the South African Air Force College in September 1967.
See below:
"Appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support of the Zionist Government"--
http://tinyurl.com/624ufv
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , spiritual head of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party which forms part of Israel’s ruling coalition, criticized US president Barack Obama on Saturday describing him as "a slave" who rules the world and who wants to control Israeli policy when it comes to building in occupied Jerusalem. In his weekly sermon, Yosef protested that "American insidiousness tells us to build here and not to build there as though we were slaves working for them" then he adds that "We live in a time when slaves are governing us and are trying to control us" refusing the US administration request to stop illegal settlement building on Palestinian occupied territories.
"We are not employees of the Americans.. and Israel does not work for the United States!" asserted Yosef.
The Rabbi then addressed the Haram al Sharif (Dome of the Rock) issue saying: "and where is our temple?! The situation there is cause for grief! There is nothing there but evil Arabs who are occupying our lands… and I hope that the messiah will appear soon to destroy them."
An Israeli government official has publicly insulted the president of the United States and US Zionist controlled media has of course kept a lid on the story. Israeli apartheid and racism is no longer just confined to us 'evil Arabs', it now goes all the way to the president of the United States. While criticizing and insulting the American president is of no consequence to Israelis, criticizing Israel or the Jews is of course unacceptable, "anti-Semitic" and can even lead to legal procedures in the US and Europe. Even the FBI last week has been accused of being "anti-Semitic" for having arrested a few Rabbis in New Jersey. Will Americans allow Israelis to call the US president "a slave" without so much as asking for an official apology from the Israeli government? When will Americans learn how to speak other languages in order not to be at the mercy of politicized Zionist-controlled media?
This is the Arabic source (newspaper) from which I got the text of Ovadia's sermon and translated it. I hoped that a correct English translation would appear somewhere in the past two days, but it didn't, so I translated the text.
"'You can't build here, you can't build there' – it's as if we were their slaves," the rabbi protested. "We are being ruled by slaves," he said," adding that, "Our messiah will come and throw them out."
"What right do they have to tell us 'here you can build, here you can't build,'" Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said in his weekly sermon, excerpts of which were re-aired on Sunday by Israeli radios.
"We are not their slaves," he said.
It marked the latest swipe in Israel at US President Barack Obama's administration over its repeated demands that the Jewish state stop all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank including annexed east Jerusalem.
The demands have created tensions between the two close allies not seen in years.
Born in Iraq in 1920, Yosef is a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and a controversial figure who has in the past referred to Arabs and Palestinians as "snakes" and "vipers" who were "swarming like ants."
Rabbi Yosef said in his weekly Saturday night lecture, "They're telling us not to build here, not to build there – as if we're their servants. Servants are ruling over us. The holy Messiah will come and disperse them." Rabbi Yosef continued, "Only Torah study will bring and draw near the Messiah. Nothing else will help. Not a high school diploma nor [knowledge of] literature."
And the wind blows terribly in this land of apartheid. But the moonlight is getting brighter as more and more of the lies upon which the racism that nourished this injustice become exposed one after another. The Israeli ministry of transportation tries to erase more of the native names in favour of the made-up names. And the Israeli Education mi8nister wants even Arab children not to hear in their schools about the Nakba (the catastrophe of our ethnic cleansing). But people's memories and collective will (aided now by the internet and a strong oral tradition) are far stronger than military might and distortions. Thankfully more Palestinians (more humans in general) are speaking out. A good way to reach our brothers and sisters who happen to be Jewish is to tell them of a history hidden from them in the smokescreen of Zionist propaganda.A good example of this is Nazi-Zionist collaborations and incidents when the Zionist movement put its political interests ahead of interests of Jewish victims.This history is little known (or at least not as well known as the history of Mufti Husseini's dalliance with Hitler that the racist & corrupt Avigdor Lieberman wants to Israeli embassies to resurrect today).
I urge you to read Lenni Brenner's book "51 Documents: History of Nazi-Zionist Collaboration".Here is an example of a message to Nazi Germany in 1941 asking for alliance by a group led by a future Prime Minister of Israel and leadership of Likud: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story799.html
The Zionist Federation of Germany wrote in a letter to the new Nazi regime: "Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group" (June 21, 1933 memo from The Zionist Federation of Germany, reprinted in Brenner, 51 Documents, p. 43). The Zionists also cooperated with the Nazis in the mid-thirties to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine while blocking other routes of escape.The details of one agreement were researched by Edwin Black (Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: the Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich & Jewish Palestine, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1984).Even Yad Vashem (built on land overseeing the destroyed and ethnically cleansed |Palestinian village of Deir Yassin) acknowledges this agreement:
“Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency concluded the "Ha'avara" (transfer) negotiations, allowing Jews immigrating to Palestine to deposit part of their assets in Germany and receive Palestine pounds upon arrival in Palestine. After three months of talks, the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the German economic authorities signed the agreement, which permitted the transfer of Jews’ capital from Germany to Palestine by immigrants or investors in the form of goods. The German authorities thereby partially removed a barrier that had greatly impeded the efforts of German Jews to emigrate to Palestine and, at the same time, increased the production and export of German goods. For the Zionists, the agreement facilitated immigration to Palestine by allowing Jewish emigres to salvage some of the value of their property as they left, and to meet one of the criteria for obtaining a certificate of immigration from the British authorities. For a time, the Ha'avara Agreement helped the Nazis in undermining the anti-Nazi boycott.”
After commencement of attacks on Jews (especially socialist and communist) under German control, the British, in the hope of easing the pressure for increased immigration into Palestine, proposed that thousands of Jewish children be admitted directly into Britain.Ben-Gurion, the recognized leader of labor Zionism at the time, was adamently opposed to the plan, telling a meeting of Labour Zionist leaders on 7 Dec. 1938:
"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel" (Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (Zed Books, 1984). cites as reference no. 23: Yoav Gelber, ' Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42)' Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, p. 199.)
England occupied Palestine illegally at the time, had issued the infamous Balfour declaration, and had armed and supported Zionist militias. The Mufti did meet with HItler who made vague promises to allow self determination to people in the Arab world should he win the war (and asked the Mufti to make propaganda statements in support of Hitler to European Muslims). But ultimately which had more of an impact on the course of the war: that Mufti liason or the Zionsit deals to block Jewiosh immigration to any other country and cut deals with Hitler to leave only one exit to Palestine (to later participate in the ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians)? I think that is a question worth pondering especially by Jews.
New Report out ~Today Israeli Zionists are tightening their grip even MORE on our freedom of speech.Israel will use this to take the cause to America next. Very serious stuff to report today, we are loosing our right to free speech against Israel. A Zionist “think tank” in England that has US ties is submitting a report to re-define the term “Anti-Semitism” and make those “new terms” illegal. Sit down, take a deep breath and get ready to be stunned. I came across this recent 38 page PDF publication which is being submitted to the British Government from the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA) the Zionist think-tank which sets out to “monitor” Anti-Semitism in the “World.” This will be used against the Government, the Media, Universities and hundreds of Pro-Palestinian organisations, not to mention blogs and any protests the public decide to hold against the Zionist state Military actions in Palestine.
This group has influential power within the British Government, indeed, one Rt Hon Denis MacShane, MP, is the Chairman of the group.
They have just delivered a “new” report In which they are “re-defining” Anti-Semitism to include just about anything one may say to criticize Israel. Such as Anti-Zionism; Holocaust denial and Holocaust related abuse; conspiracy theories; dual loyalty and the blood libel. More importantly, they take this one step further and are now including “Zionism” in this definition.
The report calls for the adoption of this new definition into law, which would then make it a “crime” to discuss or use any of the phrases, terms, arguments, theories or cases covered this new “definition.” They want the UK to adopt the EUMC (now the European Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA]) definition of “anti-Semitism” so as to outlaw the use of the word “Nazi” when referring to Israel, its government, and Zionists. But that is NOT all they are after, there are many more “demands” which are quite shocking indeed, such as any conspiracy theories about Israel and 9-11, Zionism, or the Israeli Lobby in American Politics control in Washington. Additionally they want your Children to be “re-educated when they attend University (Sounds like Nazi’s to me!) They are also calling for media controls as well. Almost all criticism of Israel AND/OR Zionism will be “branded” as Anti-Semitism and illegal, so keep reading. This definition will target all aspects of discussion on the Israel/Palestine conflict, including media, universities, demonstrations, freedom of speech and much more. Here are excerpts of the new “Zionist Big Brother” PDF report:
STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT The report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism drew attention to five themes of antisemitic discourse: anti-Zionism; Holocaust denial and Holocaust related abuse; conspiracy theories; dual loyalty and the blood libel.This report combines them into one overarching theme- playing the Nazi card.
So as we can see, every single aspect of this new form of censorship will now come under one all encompassing heading of "Playing The Nazi Card" So they are effectively lumping hundreds of very real and accurate criticisms against the IDF, the State of Israel, the Gaza Genocide, the Israeli Government and any one critical of Zionism into one little sentence with the word "Nazi" in it. How clever!! Therefore you MUST remember when reading this below that each time they use the phrase "Using the Nazi Card" they are including ALL of this as well: Any criticisms against the IDF, the State of Israel, the Gaza Genocide, the Israeli Government and any one critical of Zionism That is the danger in what they are attempting here folks. With that in mind keep reading:
THE NAZI CARD In the case of the United Kingdom, the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism recommended that the working definition be “adopted by the government and law enforcement agencies”.
When the Nazi card is played against the Israeli State, its leaders, its military practices, or its founding ideology of Zionism, it is clearly antisemitic.
Four different variants of the problem are examined in the report: - The Nazi card as abuse against Jews. - The Nazi card as abuse against the collective memory of the Holocaust. - The Nazi card in the casting of Jews as conspirators and collaborators with the Nazis. - The Nazi card manifest in discourse about Israel and Zionism. Each of these variants of the Nazi card has harmful consequences that constitute a significant common denominator and the rationale for why this type of discourse needs to be addressed. (note that Zionism is now included in the Definition)
GAZA PROTESTS: Placards carrying images of swastikas superimposed on the Star of David and the Israeli flag were commonplace in street-level protests about the recent Israeli military actions and the conflict in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. Allusions between Nazi genocidal practices and the activities of the Israeli state were also drawn in some of the speeches at protest meetings and press commentary on the conflict.
AND THIS WONT BE ALLOWED ANY MORE:
Richard Falk, the then incoming United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, published an article in 2007 titled ‘Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust’ whereby, for instance, Palestinian territories have been compared to the “Warsaw ghetto”, Libya’s deputy UN ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, reportedly drew a comparison between conditions in Gaza and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. This occasion was not the first time officials associated with the UN had drawn parallels between Israeli military actions and atrocities committed by the Nazis.
UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING ANTISEMITIC DISCOURSE The project’s aims were to: ● Identify and illuminate the main component parts of antisemitic discourse. ● Include an examination of how criticism of Israel and Zionism can crossover into and become polluted by antisemitism through the expression or assumption of core antisemitic concepts.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF ANTISEMITIC DISCOURSE This report attempts to shift the focus of analysis of contemporary antisemitism onto new ground: away from labelling and defining the problem to an understanding of the consequences of discourse against Jews, Israel and Zionism.
YOU CANNOT CRITICIZE ZIONISM:
PLAYING THE NAZI CARD AGAINST ISRAEL AND ZIONISM One of the most challenging components of antisemitic discourse in general, and the discursive theme of the Nazi card in particular, concerns the problem of when the Nazi card is played against Israel and its founding movement, Zionism.
INTRODUCTION: THE NAZI CARD AS ANTISEMITIC DISCOURSE Playing the Nazi card refers to the use of Nazi or related terms or symbols (Nazism, Hitler, swastikas, etc.) in reference to Jews, Israel, Zionism or aspects of the Jewish experience.
● It would be timely for the government to commission a rapid evidence assessment into the practical experience of using the criminal law against racist and antisemitic speech in countries where such provisions have been established.
● The Home Office, in consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Crown Prosecution Service, should prepare and issue guidance for police forces and crown prosecutors about the circumstances in which playing the Nazi card, and other forms of antisemitic discourse, amounts to unlawful incitement to racial hatred.
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE TARGETTED:
UNIVERSITIES-RE-EDUCATION OF YOUR CHILDREN: UK universities and colleges should be encouraged to debate and utilise the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) working definition of antisemitism to inform their race equality and harassment policies.
● In seeking advice from scholars with experience in the matter, the government should commission and promote educational materials for university-level lectures/seminars/workshops on Holocaust denial which examine how Holocaust denial in its explicit and more subtle manifestations constitutes antisemitic discourse.
● The European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism should produce a model statement that refutes the Nazi card point-by-point so that it can aid and inform those who seek to challenge it.(Soon the Government will be paying for these to be handed out to every kid at University!)
No more talking about AIPAC,the Jewish-Zionist Lobby, it's influence, Jane Harman affair, Israeli spies, all will be considered "anti-Semitic" soon:
JEWISH/ZIONIST LOBBY IN AMERICA It has been suggested that in recent discourse regarding the alleged role of Zionists or an Israel lobby in Western societies, the language and terms of reference used to depict their alleged actions has sometimes been reminiscent of language and themes similar to those identified by Klug when discussing the traditional depiction of the conduct of the mythical Jew. Zionists and The Zionist lobby have periodically been depicted as conspirators, controllers of the media, and of wielding undue power and influence over governments. It might therefore be suggested that such sentiment, when echoing traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories but ostensibly targeting Zionists is likewise not grounded in any real sense of ‘what they are,’ but has similarly come to reflect a discourse of hatred against Zionists as ‘Zionists’.
AND DON'T BE TALKING ABOUT BERNIE MADE-OFF ANYMORE EITHER,MORE HERE:
In addition to such conspiracies that allege Jewish and Israeli hands behind major international calamities have been references to longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories alleging orchestrated Jewish control of world financial markets.
And they are going after the Media:
THE PRESS AND MEDIA: The media in Britain have also played a hand in reproducing antisemitic conspiracy theories - even inadvertently. Most famously, the cover of the 14January 2002 edition of the New Statesman used a large glistening golden Star of David piercing a prostate Union Jack and the words ‘A kosher conspiracy?...Britain’s pro-Israel lobby’.
The Press Complaints Commission should be encouraged to utilise the EUMC working definition of antisemitism to inform guidance in its Code of Practice
● The National Union of Journalists at national and branch level should be encouraged to debate and utilise the EUMC working definition of antisemitism to inform guidance about how particular discourse can lead to hatred or discrimination against Jews.
● The Press Complaints Commission should be encouraged to utilise the EUMC working definition of antisemitism to inform guidance in its Code of Practice about how particular discourse can lead to hatred or discrimination against Jews.
● When the Nazi card is played as abuse against Jews individually or collectively, it involves a discursive and targeted hurtful act of raw explicit insult and potentially serves as a threat of future violence.
So, How insane is that statement, they are calling for a law to be passed to stop a violent crime that may not take place, or has not taken place yet? So perhaps we should start arresting people who "may" in future commit a crime because of their thoughts and opinions? ZIONIST BIG BROTHER STATE COMING SOON TO YOU
● When the Nazi card is played as abuse against the collective memory of the Holocaust, the offender ‘de-Nazifies’ the role of the Nazis and casts Jews as conspirators.
● When the Nazi card is played by casting Jews as conspirators and collaborators with the Nazis, Jews are portrayed as beneficiaries of Nazi genocidal policies.
● When the Nazi card is played against Israel and Zionism, Israel as a state is cast in the role of the Nazis with Palestinians cast as victims of eliminationist policy and practice.
So in the above statements they make it crystal clear, the “Holocaust” excuse will “never” end. In other words, there will never come a time when it can be viewed as a historical event, and there will never come a time when you can be critical of it, or have an opposing opinion of that historical event. Now, to effectively rule that people cannot have their own opinions or questions, no matter how far out, is just another form of Big Brother Control of the masses by Israel world wide. Taking that one step further, what about people who believe that 9-11 was an inside job and that Jews were involved. So, that “form” of thought will also be outlawed as illegal. SEE HERE:
In the aftermath of several recent international terrorist attacks, allegations of Jewish conspiracies spread. Since the events of 9/11, antisemitic conspiracy theories have variously alleged that Jews or Zionists were responsible for the attacks or were aware of the attacks in advance. Together with such allegations has been the suggestion that thousands of Jews were secretly warned not to arrive at work on the day of the 9/11 attacks.
AND THIS WILL ALSO BECOME ILLEGAL AS WELL:
JEWS AS CONSPIRATORS AND COLLABORATORS WITH THE NAZIS Conspiracy theories about Jews have historically provided the mainstay of antisemitic discourse. New conspiracies are promoted with varying malevolence often in reaction to prevailing social, political and economic calamities. Once given life, the conspiracy theories become part of the everyday ideology and discourse of what it is to be a Jew.
Can't have the truth about the Genocide in Gaza being reported in public, people may find out the truth!AND THEY WILL BE GOING AFTER BOOKS AS WELL, SO WATCH OUT:
In one of the earliest British contributions to the Holocaust-denial literature, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last,38 published in 1974, Richard Harwood claimed that the “deception” committed by “the Jewish people” had brought an “incalculable benefit” in that the “alleged extent of their persecution quickly aroused sympathy for the Jewish national homeland they had sought for so long”.
“The language is significant - ‘hoax’, ‘swindle’, ‘racket’ - All in themselves implying ‘Jew’ through the historical accumulation of antisemitic connotations (money grabbing, Jewing, Shylock, etc.)”.41
PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION (also will be illegal)
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Henry Ford’s The International Jew, are exemplars of such a depiction of the Jew. And more recent conspiracy theories about Jews manifest this malevolent discursive characterisation.
AND LASTLY, MORE EXPRESSIONS THAT WILL BECOME ILLEGAL:
● Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective - such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
LOOKOUT, that sweeping statement covers everything about the Zionist Lobby's control inside America. So, will we see books such as THIS by JOHN MEARSHEIMER and STEPHEN WALT and books like THIS by James Petras becoming illegal under the guise of "Anti-Semitism"?? MORE...
● Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
● Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
Don't you love that one? If it was even remotly NOT true we'd not have AIPAC, ZOA, ADL and hundreds of other "lobby" groups contolling America and it's worldwide policies! They advocate for ISRAEL not AMERICA. AIPAC spies and Jane Harman anyone? Sadly there's more:
● Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
● Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.
● Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Please pass this post on...If you are NOT Angry then you are NOT paying attention. BIG BROTHER is already here, in the name of worldwide Zionism! READ IT ALL HERE written by irish4palestine
The Zionist movement and its State - ISRAEL, do not represent the Jewish people. They never did. They represent a particular trend within the Jewish people, namely - the nationalist trend. To find out whether Israel is a Jewish State or a Zionist State one need only ask any religious Orthodox Jew anywhere. His answer will be unambiguous: a Jewish State must be ruled by Jewish religious law - "Halakha". Israel is not ruled by "Halakha" laws, but by secular laws. Therefore Israel is not a Jewish State. The fact that it provides refuge to Jews does not make it a Jewish State. Zionism and Judaism are different entities. They have contradictory qualities. Although Zionists claim to represent all Jews the Zionist movement is merely the JNP (Jewish National Party) within the Jewish people. It is one of two trends which emerged in European Jewry in the 19th Century. These trends are:
1) The Cosmopolitan secular trend, and
2) The Nationalist trend ("Zionism").
Marx, Freud, Einstein, Bob Dylan and Abbie Hoffman, belong to the Cosmopolitan trend. Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Begin, Sharon, Netanyahu, belong to the Nationalist trend. The misleading image of Israel as representative of world Jewry is due to the fact that Israeli politicians participate in international forums and make public statements purporting to represent all Jewish people. Actually they represent Zionist interests, not Jewish interests. In every case of a conflict between Jewish and Zionist interests the latter prefers their own interests. In the first half of the 20th Century Zionists co-operated with anti-Semitic European politicians suggesting to "solve" the "Jewish problem" by sending the Jews to Palestine. In 1938 Ben-Gurion said: "If I could save all Jewish children in Germany by evacuating them to other countries, or save only half of them by sending them to Palestine, I'd prefer the latter." Adolph Eichman said in his trial in Jerusalem (1961) that of all the fragments of the Jewish community he found it easiest to negotiate with the Zionists since they - like him - agreed that Jews must leave Europe.
Another example is the treatment of Holocaust survivors in Israel. Though Germany paid the Israeli government money to compensate them the Israeli government used the money for its own purposes without passing it on to the Holocaust survivors living in Israel. The survivors had to resort to strikes and demonstrations against the Israeli government to get their money. The issue is still not settled to this very day.
The latest scandal is the refusal of "Bank Leumi", the Bank founded by the Zionist Organization whose shares are held by the Israeli Government, to pay back assets of Holocaust victims to their descendant. Of 3500 claims filed by descendants with documents confirming their rights only 3 have been paid. The chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee denounced this behaviour as "Shameful and revolting" ("Ma'ariv" 22/7/2009) Until the 19th Century all Jews everywhere lived every act of daily life according to religious rules. To be "A Jew" meant one thing - to live ordinary daily life according to 613 religious rules for the conduct of every act of daily life. Religious rules dictating daily behaviour - not common language, common history, circumcision, or genetic features - kept the Jewish communities, dispersed all over the world, as a single coherent, unified, entity.
During the 19th Century, after the "Codex Napoleon" banned all legal restrictions against Jews and the Industrial Revolution offered them many new economic opportunities, most European Jews moved from their Ghettoes into the host societies and a process of fragmentation began in European Jewish communities. They split into three major fragments:
1) Religious
2) Secular and
3) Nationalist.
Each of these fragments split further into secondary fragments: The Religious split into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Traditional. The Nationalists - into Assimilationists, and Zionists, the Secular - into Marxists, Liberals and Cosmopolitans.
Within 100 years (1800-1900) 80% of European Jews ceased to live daily life according to the 613 religious rules. They became secular Cosmopolitans, Assimilationists, or Zionists. Only some 20% continued to live according to the religious rules. This happened in all Jewish communities in Germany, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Britain, France, USA, Italy, Holland, and Belgium. In 1900 only 20% of European Jews still observed all 613 religious rules while 75% became secular assimilationists, socialists, or cosmopolitans.
Only 5% became Zionists. Most Zionists were atheists. Like all atheists they saw all religions as superstitions and obstacles to enlightenment, modernization and progress.
A similar fragmentation process began among Jews in Asia and Africa a few decades later. The relative sizes of the fragments (20%-Religious, 75%-Secular, 5%-Zionists) changed after the Nazis came to power in Germany, to 20%-50%-30%. The Jewish response to the rise of Nazism was a rise in Zionism. German nationalism culminated by creating Auschwitz and by trying to conquer Russia. Jewish nationalism culminated by conquering Palestine and by creating a Zionist State. Contrary to its claims, a Zionist State is not a Jewish State as a Jewish State is one ruled by Jewish religious law ("HALAKHA") whereas the Zionist State is ruled (mainly) by secular law. Religious law is based on worship of God. Secular law is based on worship of the Nation. Zionism is Ethnocentric and worships the Jewish Nation. Judaism is Theocentric and worships the Jewish God.
Religious Judaism considers the worship of the Jewish nation as blasphemy. Orthodox Jews in Israel refuse to serve in the Israeli Army, not because they are pacifist, but because they oppose a secular State pretending to be "Jewish". Some refuse to vote in the elections, or to stand at attention when the national Anthem is played, some refuse to carry an Israeli passport. They consider Israel a State of blasphemers, not a "The Jewish State". Although the desire to resurrect Biblical Jewish independence in Palestine is expressed in every Passover meal for millennia religious Jews relegate this task to God. Rabbis emphasize that only when all Jews repent, return to worship God alone, and cease to worship false gods like money, nation, or state, will God relent and resurrect Jewish independence in Palestine (Biblical "Zion"). They warned against any human attempt to carry out this task. Their warnings went unheeded when many European Jews supported the Jewish Kabbalist Shabbtai Zevi (1626-1676) trying to resurrect Jewish independence in Palestine in the 17th century. His opponents were vindicated when his movement ended in a fiasco.
He converted to Islam, disbanded his movement, and caused a major crisis in Judaism. No wonder this episode is glossed over by the Zionist state-education in Israel. The fragments mentioned above formed political parties in Israel and their relations and deals shape Israeli politics.
From 1922 to 1977 the major fragment in the Jewish community in Palestine, consisting mostly (but not entirely) of Zionists, was the Zionist Labour movement. It was a Social- Democracy committed to nationalism and atheism. Labour Zionism created all Israeli State institutions, the Knesset, the Legal system, the Police, the Army, the educational and health systems, and most of the economy. After the UN resolution to create two States in Palestine, one for Jews and one for the Palestinians (29.11.1947) Ben-Gurion, leader of Labour Zionism, acted to prevent a conflict between Religious Jewry and a Zionist state. He offered a compromise (known as "The Status-Quo Agreement") between the Zionist State and Religious Jewry. He proposed that all traditional Jewish Holydays will be State Holydays, and all matters of marriage, divorce, and burial, be decided by religious law. Most Religious Jews accepted this compromise which has been in force ever since 1947.
It averted Religious Jewish opposition to Israel. B/G. wanted to prevent a situation where Religious Jewry - all over the world – would challenge a secular Zionist state and its image as "The Jewish State". His "Status-Quo" agreement achieved this. That is why there is no civil marriage in Israel and no Constitution (the religious demanded a religious one) and why Israeli children of mixed marriages born to non-Jewish mothers are legally bastards.
To understand the mutual relations between the secular majority and the religious minority in Israel one must understand the Jewish religion.
Most people assume that since Judaism is Monotheistic - like Islam and Christianity - it hardly differs from them. This is a mistake. Judaism differs qualitatively from Christianity and Islam. The first difference is the bond between Jewish religion and ethnicity. The Jewish religion is not Universalist like Christianity or Islam. It is an ethnic religion. It is the religion of the Jews, not of Humanity. Jews make no attempt to convert non-Jews to Judaism. Rabbis raise obstacles to those who wish to convert to Judaism. As for Jewish ethnicity - all its qualities have a religious character. Jewish religion is ethnic and Jewish ethnicity is religious. In Judaism religion imparts an ethnic identity. A Jewish believer is a member of the Jewish ethnic group. A convert to Judaism becomes a member of Jewish ethnicity. This is not the case in Christianity or Islam who do not endow one with ethnic identity. A convert to Christianity does not become a member of a Christian ethnic group. He keeps his former ethnicity. In Christianity and Islam the community of the believers is a religious entity, not an ethnic entity. In Judaism it is both.
A German convert to Judaism becomes a member of the Jewish nation. He may hold a German Passport and speak German but - if he lives his daily life according to the 613 religious rules - he is not only a Jew by faith but also a member of Jewish ethnicity. This unusual bond baffles many people, including most Jews, but it was confirmed in Israeli Law by the verdict of the Israeli High Court (1962) in the case of Oswald Rufeisen ("Brother Daniel"). The verdict stated that as Rufeisen converted to Christianity he lost his Jewish ethnicity and ceased to be a member of the Jewish nation.
The bond between religion and ethnicity in Judaism is the source of a unique problem for "lapsed Jews" who do not live daily life according to the 613 religious rules but insist that they are still Jews by ethnicity. Defining their secular Jewish ethnicit6y is problematic. Any specific quality they try to attribute to secular Jewish ethnicity exists also among non-Jews.
Moreover, no definition of secular Jewish ethnicity can achieve consensus among all Jews. Most "Lapsed Jews" provide personal definitions that suit their personal taste, but none of these is accepted by all Jews. Group identity is a quality determined by the group, not by its individual members. No member of, say, "Manchester United F.C." can determine the qualifications for membership in the club. This is determined by the club's management, not by individuals. Definitions suiting an individual are not recognized by the club.
Various attempts in the last 150 years to define secular Jewishness in a way that would be accepted by all Jews have been tried - and failed. They continue - and so do their failures. The continuation of these efforts testifies to their failures.
The State of Israel itself is the central effort to define a core for secular Jewish ethnicity. The Zionist secular State is expected to play the role that God plays for the religious. The question is - Can a secular State be Jewish?
Religious Jews say: NO! Secular Jews who insist that they are still Jews, say: YES! But they cannot define features that make a secular State - specifically Jewish. Speaking Hebrew is not - and never was - a hallmark of all Jews. Circumcision is performed also by non-Jews. Moral considerations guide Christians more than they guide religious Jews. Declaring all Jewish Holydays as official Holydays exacerbates the problem, as all Jewish Holydays have a religious character. They either commemorate a religious event or fulfil a religious function. A secular State celebrating religious Holydays does not provide a secular identity; it only deepens the confusion of the confused.
The only way to maintain Israel as a pseudo "Jewish" State is to maintain in it a numeric majority of "lapsed Jews" who no longer live according to the 613 religious rules but keep insisting they are Jews even though they cannot define their Jewishness.
Anyone who thinks this is an abstract psychological problem should be reminded that Israel's atheist PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his recent reply to US President Obama's speech in Cairo, which demanded that Israel accept the principle of a Palestinian State, insisted that the Palestinians must first recognize the "Jewish character" of Israel. This unusual demand by an atheist (no religious Jew would demand this) expresses the anxiety of secular Zionists that unless they maintain a numeric majority in Israel they will loose their ethnic identity.
When the guarantee of ethnic identity is mere quantity - rather than specific qualities - a psychological anxiety dictates politics. Religious Jews do not fear to be in minority. Their ethnic identity is shaped by their daily observance of the 613 religious rules. They never ask others to recognize the "Jewish nature" of Israel. Only Zionist "lapsed Jews" demand this. The central aim of Israeli politics is to secure Israel's "Jewish Identity" (rather than its military security or economic stability) by maintaining a numeric majority of secular, lapsed Jews, in Israel. Israel's "Jewish" identity worries them far more than its Defense or economy. The latter are means to ensure the former. The former is not a means, but an end. The "Jewish Identity complex" of "lapsed Jews" does not affect the religious Jews who have a secure religious and ethnic identity with - or without - any state.
They do not fear to be a minority and do not seek refuge in numbers To rebuff Netanyahu the Palestinian need only tell him: "We shall do so only when the Orthodox religious Jews recognize Israel as a Jewish State."
No honest secular Jew can contest this requirement. No honest Orthodox Jew will recognize a secular State as "A Jewish State" The second unique feature of the Jewish religion, which does not exist in Christianity or Islam, is the duty of the believer to live daily life according to the 613 religious rules for the conduct of ordinary life. Every issue of food, dress, work, leisure, sex, cleanliness, etc. must be carried out according to strict religious rules.
A religious Jew practices his belief not only by prayers but by obeying these rules in every daily act. The point is to live every act of daily life as an act of worship of God. This is a consequence of the third unique feature of Judaism - its Theocentrism. In Judaism - unlike in Christianity or Islam - worshipping God is done for God's sake alone, not for the sake of the believer. This Theocentric principle is illustrated and publicized by the Bible story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. The believer is tested by demanding that he perform an act which violates morality and his own interests. Only those who are willing to obey such a demand and put loyalty to God before loyalty to Humanity, morality, or self, are true Jewish believers. Christianity overturned this principle by positing a God who sacrifices his son to save humanity.
Christianity and Islam are Anthropo-centric; theyworship God as a means to improve the lot of Humanity - or of the believers. Judaism is Theo-centric. It posits God's worship for its own sake - whatever the cost to the believer, or to humanity. Religious Jews believe this practice elevates its practitioners from a state of mere physical existence to a state of spiritual existence wherein they constantly feel the presence of God. In Christianity and Islam religious worship is a means to an end - the welfare of the believer - or of humanity. In Judaism worship of God is not a means to an end but the end itself. It has precedence over all interests of the believers - or of humanity.
It does not serve life. It defines the purpose of all existence. Two more features of the Jewish religion play a role in Israeli politics today:
1) The idea that whatever happens in history is due to God's will
2) The idea that eventually God will redeem the Jewish people, send his saviour ("Messiah") to resurrect the religious Jewish State, and rebuild His Temple in Jerusalem.
These two ideas motivate Israeli Religio-Nationalist settlers in occupied Palestine today. Until 1948 most Orthodox religious Jews opposed Zionism. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 some argued that this is God's will and joined the coalition Government headed by the atheist Labour Party. They were a subordinate partner puzzled by what God meant in using atheist Zionists to set up Israel. After the stunning Israeli victory in the 1967 war, when all of Palestine - especially the holy city of Jerusalem - came under Israeli sovereignty, a trend of Religio-Zionists began to attract many young believers, who believed this victory signified God's will and the "Countdown to Redemption". Although the atheist Levi Eshkol, Israel's Labour PM in 1967, forbade any settlement in the territories conquered in 1967 hoping to trade them for peace, Rabbi Moshe Levinger entered occupied Hebron as a tourist and then declared that he intends to settle there, because God promised it to Abraham. The Deputy PM, [Ygal Alon] - a militant atheistic Socialist Zionist - .went to negotiate with Levinger, but instead of evacuating him, congratulated him.
This was the Kanossa of Labour Zionism. At the zenith of its political power Labour Zionism - committed to atheism - capitulated ideologically to Religio-Zionism.
The reason? being socialists the Labour Zionists opposed colonialism but they justified their colonization of Palestine by arguing that Palestine was desolate and unpopulated, and therefore the Zionist project was not Colonialism. Until 1967 Labour Zionism argued that Palestine was "A country without a people for a people without a country". The conquest of 1967 revealed the Palestinian people inhabiting hundreds of villages and dozens of towns in Palestine. The traditional Labour argument collapsed, but not its wish to colonize the whole of Palestine. As the religio-nationalists substituted a religious argument ("God gave this country to the Jews") Zionist Labour bowed down to the new colonizatory zeal of the religionationalists.
From that time on the ideological hegemony in the Zionist colonization of Palestine was in the hands of the religio-nationalist minority. It created facts and all Israeli governments accepted them. The religious minority ideologically dominated the "lapsed Jewish" majority due to two reasons: First - it had a clear (religious) justification for colonizing Palestine, and second - it had a clear definition of Jewish identity.
All Jews today accept two definitions of Jewish identity: the Rabbinical and the empirical. The Rabbinical definition states: "A Jew is one born to a Jewish mother". The empirical states: "A Jew is one obeying daily the 613 religious rules for the conduct of daily life". All other definitions are not accepted by all Jews. "Lapsed Jews" do not contest these two definitions. They contest their exclusivity, arguing that there are other valid definitions. The Rabbinical definition is flawed on three counts -
1) It is logically circular. What has to be defined ("Jewishness") is a condition of the definition (the "Jewishness" of the mother).
2) As it depends on the Jewishness of the mother - and of her mother - one must check the Jewishness of the matrilineal line. How far back?
3) It ignores the person's actual own faith. A person converted to Christianity, whose mother was Jewish, is considered by all Rabbis as "A Jew" (though a "sinner") because his mother was Jewish. All Rabbis agree on this. The Israeli secular High Court in its verdict on Oswald Rufeisen (1962) endorsed this. However, the Israeli Court ruled that since Israeli law is NOT religious Jewish law, the secular court does not recognize Rufeisen as "A Jew" because he converted to Christianity. The empirical definition is easy to assert, clear, and unambiguous. It takes into account the person's actual adherence (not just his declarations) to Judaism as practiced daily in ordinary life. Anyone living daily life according to the 613 religious rules is a Jew.
No Jew contests this definition. What "Lapsed Jews" contest is its exclusivity. They argue that in addition to this definition there are other valid definitions of "Jewishness". However, all other definitions have two flaws –
1) Many non-Jews qualify as well (e.g. circumcision is practiced by many non-Jews).
2) Many other Jews, especially the religious, reject all other definitions. As 80% of those who define themselves today as "Jews" do not live their daily life according to the 613 religious rules their "Jewish" ethnic identity is vague. This vagueness often generates an obsession to resolve it and becomes an identity complex. If it is acute it becomes a neurosis and as it is shared by many people it becomes a collective neurosis. This collective neurosis is the source of Zionism - and of Israeli politics. Unlike all other politics the prime aim of Israeli politics is to secure Israel's secular Jewish identity, not its military security or its economic stability. The latter are means, not ends. The end is a secure - SECULAR - Jewish ethnic IDENTITY.
Zionism created the secular Zionist State as the core of the secular Jewish identity. Loyalty to the secular State has replaced loyalty to God. Loyalty to Israel has become the core of Jewish Identity for most "Lapsed Jews" everywhere. But this is only a semblance of a solution, not a genuine solution, because the basic problem remains: Can a secular State qualify as "Jewish"? If yes, then what specific qualities make it "Jewish"?
As there are no universally accepted answers to both questions (since all religious Jews reject them) Zionism - and Israeli politics - seek refuge in the numbers of "Lapsed Jews" who suffer from the Jewish ethnic identity complex. Their solution to this problem is to have a numeric majority in Israel of "Lapsed Jews" who share this situation. The recent demand of Israel's PM that the Palestinians recognize the "Jewish nature" of Israel (which he is unable to define) or the fear of "the demographic threat" (i.e. that Palestinians become a majority in Israel) reveals the urgency of the problem. No religious Jew would ask others to "recognize" his Jewishness that he practices by obeying the 613 rules. For him such recognition is irrelevant. In matters of identity religious Jews have a clear advantage over "Lapsed Jews", they have a secure, universally accepted, definition of their Jewishness "Lapsed Jews" lack a secure, universally accepted, definition of their Jewishness.
In Israel 80% of the electorate do not live their daily life according to the 613 religious rules. Only 20% do. Therefore, despite its numeric inferiority the 20% minority has superiority in ideological controversies concerning the nature of the State of Israel.
One of these controversies concerns the future of the Palestine territories conquered in 1967. According to the Bible these territories were promised by God to Abraham and therefore belong to Jews even though they were inhabited continuously for 1300 years by Palestinian Arabs. Israeli TV often shows religious Jewish immigrants from the US in a new settlement in territories conquered in the 1967 war, cutting down olive trees planted by Palestinian owners of the land, who have inhabited it continuously for many centuries, cursing the Palestinians as intruders. Traditional Orthodox religious Jews oppose this behaviour since it serves a secular state. Many Israeli "Lapsed Jews" oppose this behaviour but cannot present Jewish arguments against it. They can present Humanist arguments but these carry no weight with religious (or nationalistic) Jews since Judaism is theocentric, not anthropocentric.
PM Rabin's assassin (1995) the Religio-Nationalist Ygal Amir, when asked by the police interrogator why he refused to admit that he has committed a crime, replied: "I did not act according to my own whim. Before acting I consulted some Rabbis. They said that if a Jew endangers the lives of many Jews it is a religious duty to kill the one and save the many". The interrogator then asked: "And what about morality?" Amir replied: "If I were a soldier in Joshua's army conquering Jericho, and God ordered me to kill all the babies in Jericho (as stated in the Bible A.O.) I would do it without any moral scruples. If it is God's command morality is irrelevant".
Amir's Religio-Nationalist colleagues, who spearhead the settlement of occupied Palestine, feel the same about morality - and legality. Convinced that they obey God, they consider morality or legality irrelevant. One can distinguish them visually from traditional Orthodox Jews as they wear ordinary clothes and a knitted, blue-white, skullcap. Traditional Orthodox Jews wear black clothes and a black silk skullcap. These two groups are hostile to each other since the Orthodox worship the Jewish God alone, while the religio-nationalists worship also the Jewish nation and the territory of Palestine. Their motto is: "The Land of Israel to the People of Israel by the Bible of Israel". In Israel today the traditional Orthodox number some 15% while the Religio-Nationalists number some 10%.
Most Zionists today are "Lapsed Jews" living outside Israel. Their emotional support of Israel shores up their insecure Jewish identity. Most of them are nationalistic and support Israeli politics uncritically. A small minority is critical of Israeli politics. Zionists visit Israel but have no intention to immigrate. Ben-Gurion used to say: "A Zionist is a Jew who pays another Jew to immigrate to Israel".
Today most Israelis are not Zionists. Being born and raised in Israel they relate to it as a Frenchman relates to Fran ce. They have their own, Israeli, nationalism. Their Israeli identity is shaped by speaking Hebrew as a mother-tongue, by serving 3-years in the Israeli Army, and by daily life in Israel. Most of them rarely visit a Synagogue, rarely pray, and totally ignore the 613 religious rules for conduct of daily life.
Israeli sociologists describe Israelis as "Hebrew-speaking gentiles". When they live outside Israel they find more in common with local non-Jews than with local religious Jews. The Israeli Ministry of Education became worried when it realized that the Israeli identity is replacing Jewish identity among Israelis and de-Zionizes them. To counter this process the Ministry of Education organizes regular visits of Israeli High-School pupils to Auschwitz. They are shown the heaps of suitcases, shoes, eyeglasses, and hair left by the Jews killed there.
Then their teachers lead them to draw two conclusions:
1) Hatred of Jews is a permanent feature of Humanity.
2) Only a Zionist State can save Jews from persecution.
The first conclusion fits the Zionist argument that as Jew-haters define Jews it hardly matters how the Jews define themselves. The second conclusion fits the Zionist argument that Jews fleeing from the Nazis died because no country was willing to accept them. Therefore a Zionist state is necessary as a reliable shelter for Jews. Both conclusions are flawed.
1) If persecution defines one's ethnic identity one develops dependence on persecution. One has a vested interest in its continuation since its absence threatens one's identity.
2) Positing Israel as a shelter for persecuted Jews ignores the possibility that the shelter itself might be attacked. Suppose a Zionist state existed in the 1930s and Jewish refugees from the Nazis found shelter in it. Had Rommel won the battle of El-Alamein in 1942 and conquered Egypt and Palestine, the fate of the Jews there would have been the same as in Nazi-occupied Poland. Jews were saved in all places that Nazis did not conquer.
A Zionist state is no shelter. Today lives of Jews in Israel are threatened far more than lives of Jews in other countries. A "shelter" is often a trap rather than a safe place.
To overcome racist persecution one must defeat racism, rather than seek shelter from it. Some "Lapsed Jews" become Zionists or Israelis to secure their Jewish Identity, but many - whose numbers grow constantly - reject both options. Their fuzzy "Jewish Identity" creates a A problem. They assimilate formally but feel culturally alien. This is due to another feature of Jewish religion, namely, its ban on symbolizing God. Religious Jews are forbidden to make any picture, sculpture, or sign symbolizing God. They are forbidden to mention His name and must refer to Him only as "Blessed be he". The reason for this ban is simple - people tend to worship symbols rather than what they symbolize. By banning symbolization of God Judaism almost escaped symbol-worship common to other religions, almost but not quite, because most Jewish believers worship Biblical texts. Biblical texts are "Holy" and are worshipped by many Jews. The Religio-Nationalists are steeped in Biblical text-worship. Insistence on God's worship for its own sake and the ban on symbol-worship create a reverence for abstract entities. This often persists even when the believers become a-theists or anti-theists. Though they no longer believe in God they retain respect for the abstract. For this reason the percentage of "Lapsed Jews" among Pure Mathematicians or Theoretical Physicists far exceeds their percentage in the population. Respect among Jews for abstract entities is a cultural - not a genetic - quality. It also explains why many Jews do not consider physical reality as the only - or the main - force determining human behaviour. This causes many assimilating Jews to feel "outsiders" in a sympathetic (but materialistic) host society that does not discriminate against them. Obsession with materiality bores them. Feeling "Jewish" without being religious, Zionist, or nationalistic, often produces a creative urge. Those afflicted by it seek to assert their uniqueness by creating something new. This is a positive response to the "Jewish-Identity Complex".
Despite all resistance all over the world Tribal-Identities gradually give way to Ethnic- Identities which gradually give way to a Cosmopolitan Human-Identity. Electronic communication, TV, Internet, and Mobile phones, enhance this process. Concern for ALL human beings, rather than for one's own tribe or n ation, is a positive trend. "Lapsed Jews" can use their ethnic-identity-complex to promote a new "All-Human" loyalty, superseding all tribal, ethnic, or religious, loyalties. It is a worthy role. Far worthier than preserving a narrow ethnic loyalty fearing and fighting other ethnic loyalties
Here is an interesting article on Israel being a Zionist State and not a Jewish state. I thank Spiro for the forward and Akiva for permission to distribute. I am not aware of it being published as of yet.
Dear all, I am in need of this online survey to be filled for my academic and theological purpose. Filling this survey also helps you to evaluate your belief with the fundamental beliefs. So please fill this online survey.
And the wind blows terribly in this land of apartheid. But the moonlight is getting brighter as more and more of the lies upon which the racism that nourished this injustice become exposed one after another. The Israeli ministry of transportation tries to erase more of the native names in favour of the made-up names. And the Israeli Education mi8nister wants even Arab children not to hear in their schools about the Nakba (the catastrophe of our ethnic cleansing). But people's memories and collective will (aided now by the internet and a strong oral tradition) are far stronger than military might and distortions. Thankfully more Palestinians (more humans in general) are speaking out. A good way to reach our brothers and sisters who happen to be Jewish is to tell them of a history hidden from them in the smokescreen of Zionist propaganda.A good example of this is Nazi-Zionist collaborations and incidents when the Zionist movement put its political interests ahead of interests of Jewish victims.This history is little known (or at least not as well known as the history of Mufti Husseini's dalliance with Hitler that the racist & corrupt Avigdor Lieberman wants to Israeli embassies to resurrect today).
I urge you to read Lenni Brenner's book "51 Documents: History of Nazi-Zionist Collaboration".Here is an example of a message to Nazi Germany in 1941 asking for alliance by a group led by a future Prime Minister of Israel and leadership of Likud: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story799.html
The Zionist Federation of Germany wrote in a letter to the new Nazi regime: "Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group" (June 21, 1933 memo from The Zionist Federation of Germany, reprinted in Brenner, 51 Documents, p. 43). The Zionists also cooperated with the Nazis in the mid-thirties to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine while blocking other routes of escape.The details of one agreement were researched by Edwin Black (Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: the Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich & Jewish Palestine, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1984).Even Yad Vashem (built on land overseeing the destroyed and ethnically cleansed |Palestinian village of Deir Yassin) acknowledges this agreement:
“Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency concluded the "Ha'avara" (transfer) negotiations, allowing Jews immigrating to Palestine to deposit part of their assets in Germany and receive Palestine pounds upon arrival in Palestine. After three months of talks, the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the German economic authorities signed the agreement, which permitted the transfer of Jews’ capital from Germany to Palestine by immigrants or investors in the form of goods. The German authorities thereby partially removed a barrier that had greatly impeded the efforts of German Jews to emigrate to Palestine and, at the same time, increased the production and export of German goods. For the Zionists, the agreement facilitated immigration to Palestine by allowing Jewish emigres to salvage some of the value of their property as they left, and to meet one of the criteria for obtaining a certificate of immigration from the British authorities. For a time, the Ha'avara Agreement helped the Nazis in undermining the anti-Nazi boycott.”
After commencement of attacks on Jews (especially socialist and communist) under German control, the British, in the hope of easing the pressure for increased immigration into Palestine, proposed that thousands of Jewish children be admitted directly into Britain.Ben-Gurion, the recognized leader of labor Zionism at the time, was adamently opposed to the plan, telling a meeting of Labour Zionist leaders on 7 Dec. 1938:
"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel" (Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (Zed Books, 1984). cites as reference no. 23: Yoav Gelber, ' Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42)' Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, p. 199.)
England occupied Palestine illegally at the time, had issued the infamous Balfour declaration, and had armed and supported Zionist militias. The Mufti did meet with HItler who made vague promises to allow self determination to people in the Arab world should he win the war (and asked the Mufti to make propaganda statements in support of Hitler to European Muslims). But ultimately which had more of an impact on the course of the war: that Mufti liason or the Zionsit deals to block Jewiosh immigration to any other country and cut deals with Hitler to leave only one exit to Palestine (to later participate in the ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians)? I think that is a question worth pondering especially by Jews.
Avigdor Lieberman, the brashly-racist foreign minister of the apartheid Israeli state, reportedly recently ordered Zionist embassies around the world to circulate a 1941 photo showing the former Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Husseini meeting with German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Lieberman hopes that the picture would help counter growing international pressure on the Zionist regime to stop ethnic-cleansing measures against the Palestinians, especially in occupied Jerusalem .
The release of the picture is widely viewed as a desperate feat by the widely-reviled Lieberman to make a difference as a foreign minister.
Lieberman has been largely boycotted by the international community, mainly due to his radical and expressly racist views.
Given his pariah status around the world, the Israeli government went as far as asking other Israeli officials, such as Defence Minister Ehud Barak, to carry out the Foreign Minister’s functions, especially in talks with American and European officials.
Lieberman’s desperate act is likely to raise many eyebrows since it comes from a man whose mindset and ideological convictions differ little from those of Adolf Hitler.
Indeed, Lieberman’s infatuation with Jewish nationalism (the correct term is Jewish fascism) can be viewed as a virtual carbon copy of Hitler’s obsession with German nationalism.
Moreover, Lieberman’s brazenly racist discourse against non-Jews in general and Israel’s Palestinian population is nothing short of a later-day echo of the Aryan Nazi ideology.
Furthermore, Liberman’s strident bellicosity and pugnacity resemble to a large extent the Nazi rhetoric against Germany’s neighbours which later found expression in the invasion of Poland and occupation of large parts of Europe .
For example, Lieberman has called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, blanket-bombing Palestinian streets, shopping centres, banks, and neighbourhoods for the purpose of forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homeland in order to make a “lebensraum” available for Jewish settlers.
He also called for drowning Palestinian political prisoners in the Dead Sea, bombing Tehran and the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
In fact, this thuggish petty criminal is the last person on earth who is morally qualified to criticize Amin Husseini for having a brief encounter with the leader of the Third Reich.
Well, does Lieberman dare to tell us how many Jewish Zionist leaders allied themselves with Hitler? Does he dare to tell us how many Jewish soldiers and officers served in the Wehrmacht, Gestapo and SS? And then what about the close relationship between the Third Reich and Jewish terrorist groups operating in Palestine , such as the Stern Gang? And what about the tacit understandings between the Zionist and Nazi leaderships according to which the Zionists accepted that hundreds of thousands of European Jews be annihilated rather than allowed to immigrate to North America?
According to the late Israeli writer and intellectual Israel Shahak, Jewish soldiers serving in the Nazi security apparatus were most feared by the local Jewish population. Shahak, a holocaust survivor himself, related that when a Jewish mother sent her son to do an errand, she taught him that he might pass through a German checkpoint but never through a Jewish-manned checkpoint.
Besides, Husseini was a man who saw his country, his ancestral homeland, being devoured by the British-backed Zionist movement, and thought, rightly or wrongly, that enlisting the support of a contemporary world power like Germany might help his people save their country and regain their freedom and independence.
Hence, one might really ask why it was perfectly acceptable for Zionists to collaborate with the Nazis in order to save Jewish lives whereas it was totally wrong for the leadership of a people facing near extermination at the hands of Zionism to behave similarly for the purpose of saving their people.
True, Hitler was a mass murderer, par excellence. But how about Jewish mass murderers, before and after Hitler?
Today, in Israel, school students complete their high school education without ever hearing the name “Genrikh Yagoda” (Genrich Grigorivc Yagoda), who is one of the greatest murderers of all time.
Yagoda diligently carried out Stalin’s collectivization orders and was responsible for the death of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the genocidal Gulag system. And after Stalin no longer viewed him favourably, Yagoda was demoted and subsequently executed, and was replaced as Chief Hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the ‘bloodthirsty dwarf’ who had a Jewish wife.
Another Russian Jew named Lazar Kaganovitch, also an aide to Stalin, was responsible for the extermination of millions of Ukrainians. During the harsh winter of 1932-33, mass starvation created by Kaganovitch reached critical levels and Ukrainians were forced to eat their pets, boots and belts, plus bark and roots. Some parents even ate infant children.
More to the point, it is really ironic in a certain sense that Zionism projects itself as an antithesis of Nazism when nearly all Nazi characters have been nearly literally copied by the Zionist leadership.
Zionism, for example, has declared all Jews a distinct ethnicity, just as the Nazis had declared all Germans a distinct ethnicity.
Both Zionism and Nazism strove to build a ‘state’ that would be ‘redeemed’ through violent purification (in the case of Nazi Germany) and ‘an Iron wall’ (in the case of Zionist Israel).
In both instances, ethnic cleansing was the main tool used to obliterate the ‘inferiors,’ the ‘water carriers and wood hewers’ in order to create ‘German-only’ settlements in Europe and ‘Jewish-only’ settlements in Palestine .
In all honesty, there are no fundamental differences between Jewish national socialism (Zionism) and German national socialism (Nazism). The Nazis preached the ‘Master Race’ to justify Nazism while Zionists adopted the ancient myth of the ‘Chosen People’ to justify Zionism.
Moreover, we can’t really ignore the absolute similarity between the Zionist ethnic conquest of Palestine and the implanting therein of ‘Jewish settlers’ at the expense of the native Palestinian Muslims and Christians, and the Nazi drive for ‘Lebensraum’ in Poland and the importation of ‘Aryans’ at the expense of the indigenous population.
Yes, there in Europe, the Nazis sought to steal the Sudetenland and here in Palestine , the Zionists are stealing the West Bank . The arguments are the same, the lies are the same and the means are nearly identical.
We need to highlight these similarities and the ‘common ground’ between Zionism and Nazism, irrespective of how many people will be upset by these comparisons. The truth is always a paramount value in itself.
The Nazi-like occupation of Palestine by Israel is not the act of a few Israeli Jews. It is not even the act of the military establishment alone. It is the collective act of a morally desensitized society that has nearly lost its humanity and succumbed to a collective psychosis that is not unlike the moral blindness that struck the German people more than sixty years ago.
In some ways, Palestinians have fared far worse than Hitler’s victims; for the Palestinian tragedy is ongoing and Palestinians, unlike Jews, who still receive compensation for losses dating back sixty years, receive no reparations for lost personal property, not even an acknowledgment from their tormenters of any responsibility for their dispossession.
Sixty years ago Zionists demolished 438 Palestinian villages and poisoned or destroyed wells to ensure that their rightful owners would not return. Today, Zionists keep on behaving more or less along the same traditions, demolishing homes, destroying farms, and narrowing people’s horizons, all with the goal of making them emigrate.
Today in every junior high school in America , students read Anne Frank, while in every high school Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’ is requisite reading. This is the man who says brazenly that he readily identifies with Israeli crimes and that he couldn’t bring himself to say bad things about Israel. The victims of the first Kristallnacht enjoy the world’s approbation and sympathy, while at the same time having succeeded in demonizing an entire people, for whom Kristallnacht still remains a night without end.
But, unlike the German national socialists, Jewish national socialists are falsifying history and reality to justify their crimes against humanity. The Holocaust narrative, which has been elevated to the status of a religion, allows Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, to invoke the mantra ‘Never Again’ while it sits on Arab lands stolen from Ein Karem and overlooking the unmarked graves of Palestinians massacred by Judeo-Nazi terrorists at Deir Yassin.
It is sad, really sad, that most Jews are now finding themselves in the shoes of their former oppressors, knowingly and consciously.
On August 23, 1947, nearly one year before Israel ’s birth, Harry Truman wrote the following to Eleanor Roosevelt, apparently in the wake of another Jewish atrocity in Palestine :
“I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.
In light of Israel’s Nazi-like behavior in Palestine, it is difficult to view Truman’s prophetic words with indifference. In fact, it is a moral obligation of the first order to oppose Zionism with the same vigour and same determination the world demonstrated in the face of Nazism.
Here is a link to an article that is of interest. It is about Israel setting up a 24 man group to scan the net and to disseminate pro-Israeli material and no doubt counter criticism of Israel.
The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook may not be all that it seems.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel.
Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilized soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government’s line on the Middle East conflict.
“To all intents and purposes the internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project.
The existence of an “internet warfare team” came to light when it was included in this year’s Foreign Ministry budget. About 150,000 US dollars have been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year.
The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term hasbara, officially translated as “public explanation” but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organizations and initiatives that promote Israel’s image in print, on TV and online.
In an interview this month with the Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, Mr Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry’s hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Rona Kuperboim, a columnist for Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, denounced the initiative, saying it indicated that Israel had become a “thought-police state”.
She added that “good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved.”
Her column was greeted by several talkbackers asking how they could apply for a job with the Foreign Ministry’s team.
The project is a formalization of public relations practices the ministry developed specifically for Israel’s assault on Gaza in December and January.
“During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers,” Mr Shturman said.
“We gave them background material and hasbara material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the internet.”
The Israeli army also had one of the most popular sites on the video-sharing site YouTube and regularly uploaded clips, although it was criticized by human rights groups for misleading viewers about what was shown in its footage.
Mr Shturman said that during the war the ministry had concentrated its activities on European websites where audiences were more hostile to Israeli policy. High on its list of target sites for the new project would be the BBC News website and Arabic websites, he added.
Elon Gilad, who heads the internet team, told Calcalist that many people had contacted the ministry offering their services during the Gaza attack. “People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the internet.”
He suggested that there had been widespread government cooperation, with the ministry of absorption handing over contact details for hundreds of recent immigrants to Israel, who wrote pro-Israel material for websites in their native languages.
The new team is expected to increase the ministry’s close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a programme called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel.
Nasser Rego of Ilam, a group based in Nazareth that monitors the Israeli media, said Arab organizations in Israel were among those regularly targeted by hasbara groups for “character assassination”. He was concerned the new team would try to make such work appear more professional and convincing.
“If these people are misrepresenting who they are, we can guess they won’t worry too much about misrepresenting the groups and individuals they write about. Their aim, it’s clear, will be to discredit those who stand for human rights and justice for the Palestinians.”
When The National called the Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman, denied the existence of the internet team, though he admitted officials were stepping up exploitation of new media.
He declined to say which comments by Mr Shturman or Mr Gilad had been misrepresented by the Hebrew-language media, and said the ministry would not be taking any action over the reports.
Israel has developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to new media since it launched a “Brand Israel” campaign in 2005.
Market research persuaded officials that Israel should play up good news about business success, and scientific and medical breakthroughs involving Israelis.
Mr Shturman said his staff would seek to use websites to improve “Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity”.
David Saranga, head of public relations at Israel’s consulate-general in New York, which has been leading the push for more upbeat messages about Israel, argued last week that Israel was at a disadvantage against pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“Unlike the Muslim world, which has hundreds of millions of supporters who have adopted the Palestinian narrative in order to slam Israel, the Jewish world numbers only 13 million,” he wrote in Ynet.
Israel has become particularly concerned that support is ebbing among the younger generations in Europe and the United States.
In 2007 it emerged that the Foreign Ministry was behind a photo-shoot published in Maxim, a popular US men’s magazine, in which female Israeli soldiers posed in swimsuits.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi. The version on this website is published by permission of Jonathan Cook.
I still could not but release from of the pressure out of my frustrated-mind......so I wrote those lines
Did anyone hear Abraham saying "I am a Jew " Did Moses declare to be a Jew ???
or simply a "believer" !!
So why is Judaism " for Jews only " when Christianity and Islam consider Abraham an Moses as one of their own ,
how come the Jews claim the exclusivity ??
Adam and Eve , did pray in a Mosque ? or in a Church or in a Synagogue ??
And the almighty God, to whom does he belong ????
Abraham was an Iraqi-Chaldean Moses was an Egyptian bastard-Prince. Jesus was a Palestinian-carpenter
Abraham asked the permission from the Palestinians to be able to bury his wife inside Palestine.
Moses was not allowed to enter Palestine.... So to whom belongs Palestine ??, if not to who ever calls himself Palestinian.
If it is correct that God reserved a piece of Land for the Jews , would almighty God reserve also one part of Heaven for them ?? or would they mix , with the rest of humanity ,
in Paradise or in Hell ??.
And when God make that " promise " to Abraham, the Jews did not exist yet
Islam did not start with the Prophet Mohammad Islam started with Abraham.
Monotheism did not end with Judaism it just started, and it never ends , as long that there are believers in the one and only......
Jews once came out of the Ghetto but the Ghetto is still inside them.
Mohammad and Jesus never recognised the uniqueness of anybody nor of any people and both have called for universalism.
Why should the the Ashkenazim-Jew come and live by the Tiberian-Sea which is full of Syrian waters ?? and when it is also on Arab land......? Why should the Ashkenazim-Jew drink from the Jordan river which is born in Lebanon Why should a converted Jew re-inherit a misinterpreted-promise done to a Chaldean , and which was fulfilled already ?????
What was the religion of Abraham the Chaldean what is his relation to Abraham Goldberg from Kiev ???
Is Abraham Goldstein the grand-son of Abraham the Chaldean ???
Is Barbara Streisand related to Sarah the Chaldean ??
Is Moses Egyptian ,Nubian or Sudanese ?? When his father is unknown , how come Moses has a nationality ???
and which one ? please. If his real(Jewish) mother has breast-fed him why did she ask to be paid for for doing so ???
Many questions are there
but only one religion........or no religion .
Raja Chemayel
interrupting his holidays , just to remind us.....
Israel did commit war crimes - Breaking the silence : 23:00MinVideo:
A group of soldiers who took part in Israel's assault in Gaza in December and January say widespread abuses were committed against civilians under "permissive" rules of engagement. Inside Story discusses whether Israel did commit war crimes and if it did, can those responsible be held accountable.
The old Hebron to Jerusalem (now Hebron-to-wall-near Bethlehem) road was lined up with perhaps over 200 armed special forces. These are not Israeli but Palestinian "security". I was going to pick a friend at Dheisheh Refugee camp to eat Knafah (a Palestinian sweet). Every 10 meters (30 ft) for a stretch of over a mile there was one of those security men. Young people 18-24 years old. The "Palestinian Authority" spends most of its budget not on healthcare or education or any other item but on security. We were told President Abbas is coming to the area (either to the headquarters in AlMuqata'a or to the "Presidential Palace" in Artas area very near an Israeli settlement). After the big motorcade the streets had all been cleared of parked cars. The police were slow to let the original traffic reopen and for cars to park again. At the Knafa shop, we had to struggle to get parking and I think it happened only after the owner gave free Knafa to the policemen on duty. No one knows why streets are closed or what is the occasion for the visits of such dignitaries to our little town of Bethlehem (aka Ghetto 12). After the Knafa we visited the besieged village of Tqu' just two miles southwest of Bethlehem and we saw the desperation of these villages which get no presidential visits. This village and dozens like it are besieged by colonial Jewish-only settlements which took most of their best lands and water resources. Here the colonies of Tekoa, El David and Nodekim (where Avigdor Lieberman lives) sit on the lands of the village. The water resources have been confiscated and the village must buy its water from the Israeli company that has for some 40 years been pillaging the village water wells. Near the entrance and one of the water wells, a roving Israeli checkpoint stopped my car and the young (perhaps Russian) kid sweating and out of his elements wearing heavy cloths and carrying a gun perhaps heavier than he is asks me to step out of the car and to then open the trunk etc. The home we visited had a father with 10 children way below poverty level but with a dignity and generosity that is legendary for such simple decent village people. Unemployment is rampant and some village people are forced to work in the colonial settlements just to survive. But this family says they would prefer to starve than do that. The colonial settlements have all their needs of water, infrastructure, and Israeli government support (and new buildings not withstanding Obama's empty rhetoric). The lavish life-style reminiscent of Southern California a few hundred yards away from unbelievable man-made poverty is emblematic of the worst forms of apartheid and human cruelty to fellow humans. On stolen lands and using stolen water, they even have a Jewish only water Park overseeing the desert (the Dead Sea and Jordan are visible) attracting colonial settlers from both sides of the apartheid wall. Oh yes, the three colonies are on the so-called Palestinian side of the wall!. I saw enough for one day and on the way back to Beit Sahour, I console myself with the site of the ruints of a castle of the tyrranical King Herod built near Tqu' 2000 years ago. He and his brutal rule have long dissappeared while the native people (dark skinned and beautiful, the Canaanitic descendents remain in the people of Tqu'). I wished Palestinain self-declared leaders go to Tqu' and other besieged villages.
The lunatic apartheid system unleashed here over the past 127 years is producing some really weird anomalies beyond the sad story of Tqu' and villages like it. The intensity of these anomalies have increased recently perhaps heralding in the end of the racist ideologies of chosenness (and us versus them) that manifest itself in Zionism. Weird stories are here told every day: Ultra Orthodox Jews stoning cars in Jerusalem Saturday (hurting 4) in a rioting that will not be quelled with home demolitions or administrative detentions (let alone rubber coated steel bullets or live ammunition) that Palestinians face regularly. It will be little covered in Western media (self-censored due to Zionist sympathies). Ultra Zionist are creating a new settlement to spite Obama and calling it, wait for this, Obama! The Israel ministry of transportation will change signs to show more "Jewish" (Hebrew) names even when written in Arabic. Thus Nazareth (English) and An-Nasreh (Arabic) will be scrubbed for the hebrew version (notsrim). Ditto for AlQuds/Jerusalem which will hence be Yerushalaym (the latter is ironically stolen/distorted from the Aramaic Canaanitic name of the city Ur Salem, the house of Salem, the Canaanitic God of Peace). The Israeli foreign ministry hired legions of commentators to scour the internet and produce blogs and comment-back to make Israel look good and Palestinians bad (http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=34520 ).
Israel, which kidnapped Internationals in an act of state piracy in International waters (on their way to Gaza) gave the permission to Egypt to let the same group into Gaza (but for one day). Gaza civilians continue to die due to a siege that is a war crime and a crime against humanity yet few people in position of influence protest. It is also absurd that the Palestinian "leadership" cannot get the courage to rise above the pettiness (both between people in Fatah, and between Hamas and Fatah not to mention the self-marginalization of other groups) or to rise above the trappings of imagined "authority" while not standing with our own people (when was the last time a "leader" was arrested blocking a bulldozer or protecting a family from eviction). Meanwhile Israeli prosecutors quietly dropped a case against a settler who shot two Palestinians at point blank range because the defense threatened to demand Israeli security services expose what they consider information harmful to state security (my guess is that the information is that the defendant like other racist settlers and state security services are team). Another court released a settler who shot a Palestinian (on Palestinian land) claiming the unarmed Palestinian "appeared threatening." The Palestinian "authority" (which has limited other authorities) banned AlJazeera television and then unbanned it (at least they respond to some pressure). Hamas and Fatah officials continue to hold hundreds of prisoners from the opposing camps (but only one Israeli occupation soldier, in Hamas's hands). Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation authorities continue to "harvest" "wanted" Palestinians going to extremes of joining demonstrations, helping cut apartheid fences and egging on demonstrators to use violence and then arresting those that fall into the trap (e.g. as Happened in Ni'lin last week). And the war criminal and disgraced ex-prime minister of the apartheid regime (Olmert) has the Chutzpah to write and publish a column in the Washington Post titled (this is not a joke): "How to Achieve a Lasting Peace: Stop Focusing on the Settlements".
Perhaps all this fits under the misnamed condition called the "Jerusalem syndrome". Perhaps like the Swine flue (but far more deadly), it is becoming pandemic since it is spreading around the world. Obama like Condy Rice before him caught it and began to wisper and wimper nonsense (Condi: we said Israel should withdraw from the cities and we mean it; Obama: We said Israel should freeze settlement activities and we mean it). We mean it by giving Israel billions of our taxes, don't you see.. The Prime minister of Canada shamelessly supports a racist entity called "Jewish National Fund" (imagine a "white national fund" that takes lands to clear them of dark-skinned people). And on and on.
The few sane people (or at least those saner than the average person here in Apartheid land) get together and try to challenge the system (see for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8149464.stm http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=9018740001 ) but it is not easy when you are swimming against the tide and is surrounded by sharks swimming the other direction, blocking it and taking bites every once in a while. Fortunately some sane people remain and more are awakened every day. I meet such great people everyday. I just gave a talk to group of 40 bright inquisitive young people from around the world and their understanding of the situation was amazing.
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them."
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
Both quotes from Arundhati Roy
PS As several readers pointed out to me, the quote I put from Ali Hebshi was simply his retelling of a famous marxist quote but the above are definitely original Arundhati :-)
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home http://qumsiyeh.org
"I am what you call a matchmaker," Rosenbaum is quoted as saying at a July 13 meeting with the two undercover agents.
"I'm doing this a long time," the complaint says Rosenbaum told the two agents. He then added: "Let me explain to you one thing. It's illegal to buy or sell organs. … So you cannot buy it. What you do is, you're giving a compensation for the time."
As we learn from Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne that “Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year,” we also happen to be informed by every press outlet about the massive New Jersey Corruption Sweep: A shocking tale of money-laundering and human organ trading led by a bunch of Rabbis.
The NY Times reports “It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms”. In an article titled the “Jewish Launderette” the Israeli Ynet takes it further providing the juicy details. “The FBI raided synagogues and arrested a few Rabbis. One of those who are held in custody is Rabbi Yitzchak Levi Rosenbaum of Brooklyn who is suspected of trading in body parts. He is charged with a decade-long activity selling kidneys, exploiting both ill and poor donators. He would convince a donator to sell his kidney for $10.000. Rabbi Levi Rosenbaum would then sell the kidney to the needy for $160.000.”
I may raise the inevitable question here, can you imagine your local priest or Imam trading in ‘body parts’? Can you think of a Muslim cleric or a pastor trying to buy your kidney or sell you one in a ‘parking lot’ or in a 'diner’?
I do not think so.
Here is my suggestion to Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary and everyone else who happens to be ‘concerned’ with the ‘rise of anti-Semitism’.
In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime.
On July 6, co-founders Lori Lowenthal Marcus and Allyson Rowen Taylor announced: "Z Street is launched, Will end J Street Treason." More on that below.
Continuing they said: "welcome to Z street! No more appeasement, no more negotiating with terrorists, no more enabling cowards who fear offending more than they fear another Holocaust. Z STREET is for those who are willing not only to support - but to defend - Israel, the Jewish State."
Never mind that no nation threatens Israel nor has for decades. It's a regional superpower - nuclearized and defended by the world's fourth most powerful military, armed with the latest state-of-the-art weapons and technology, and not reluctant to use them.
Its only adversaries are self-made and are needed to justify oppression, a culture of violence, an ethnocracy, exclusivity, privilege, and Jewish exceptionalism over others deemed inferior, legitimate enemies, and terrorists.
Zionism is corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful.
-- it claims Jewish supremacy, specialness and uniqueness as God's "chosen people;"
-- espouses violence, not peaceful coexistence;
-- confrontation over diplomacy;
-- strength through militarism, intimidation, and naked aggression;
-- is what Joel Kovel calls "a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses" led by real terrorists posing as democrats;
-- what others say is repugnant, indefensible, destructive and malignant; and
-- what author Alan Hart calls "the real enemy of the Jews;"
-- an ideology contemptuous of Judaism's moral values and ethical principles;
-- the driving force behind a re-awakened anti-Semitism; and
-- a monster that's consuming its host and threatening humanity.
That's what Z Street supports.
Its Founders Have Disturbing Resumes
Based in Philadelphia, Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes about Israel and the Middle East for media outlets like the pro-Israeli American Thinker. She's also affiliated with the extremist Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
From Los Angeles, Allyson Rowen Taylor is associate director of the 2001-founded Stand With Us, a pro-Israeli front group calling itself:
-- "an international education organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told in communities, campuses, libraries, the media and churches through brochures, speakers, conferences, missions to Israel, and thousands of pages of Internet resources."
In other words, it's a pro-Israeli mouthpiece promoting Zionist extremism at the expense of truth and an equitable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some of Taylor's Amazon book review comments give her away:
-- on (Fox News) Sean Hannity's "Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism," she "wonder(s) if anyone other than those who respect and understand the issues of Jihad, Marxism and 'Facism' will read this book. But I recommend it....I love Sean."
-- on John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," she rants about authors blaming everything on Jews. This "book should have been funded by Henry Ford, or the 'Thrid' Reich. Even Norman Finkelstein, a staunch hater of the Israeli State, found flaws in this sad excuse for a book....Give me a break, 'Anti Semites' are just 'anti Semites,' " and
-- on Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," she calls the book "a mess....This is a work of a man who 'clarly' is in cahoots with the radical Islamofacists..it should be filed in the 'fiction' section of the library."
Taylor is also CEO and president of the August 2008-founded People Against Hate Speech, another pro-Israeli front group affiliated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, notoriously pro-Zionist with over 300,000 global members and support from prominent figures like George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Senator Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Z Street's Charter
"Z STREET is an organization of Zionists who join together at this time of great danger to the Jewish State of Israel and, increasingly, to world Jewry.
Fact check: Israel creates its own enemies through extremism, lawlessness, wars of choice, and decades of contempt for Palestinians, other Arabs and Islam.
"I. Z STREET proudly asserts the right of the Jewish people to a state."
Fact check: Israel denies one to Palestinians, occupies their land, and expropriates it for its own use in violation of international law.
"II. Z STREET proudly reclaims the words 'Zionist' and 'Jewish State' as ones to wear with pride, in direct opposition to their recent branding as shameful or impolite terms."
Fact check: Zionism's extremist, destructive ideology is explained above.
"III. Z STREET maintains that Jews have the right to live anywhere in the world, including, and especially, within greater Israel."
Fact check: Palestinians are denied all rights, including to live securely on their own land in their own country in peace.
"IV. Z STREET is dedicated to maintaining and strengthening the Jewish State of Israel in the firm belief that there can be no compromises or agreements with, and no concessions to, any Terrorist Entity or any individual Terrorists."
Fact check: For over six decades, Israel has committed slow-motion genocide against indigenous Palestinians who want peace, not conflict; are willing to recognize the Jewish state in return for their own; and who deserve equal rights to Jews and all others, but are denied them by an oppressive occupier.
"V. Z STREET is dedicated to rejecting and refuting the condemnation of any actions taken by Israel which are not similarly condemned when taken by any other individuals or political entities."
Fact check: Israel acts lawlessly, chooses violence over peace, and calls legitimate self-defense "terrorism."
"VI. Z STREET is dedicated to constantly and consistently declaring and affirming the facts which fully support the legal, moral and historical right of the Jewish State to exist in peace and security without physical or verbal assault against its sovereignty or legitimacy. This necessarily entails adamantly opposing the dismantling of and/or handing over territory to any other entity or entities."
Fact check: Israel demands special rights as "God's chosen people" but denies any to indigenous Palestinians. In addition, its settlements and human rights abuses violate international law.
"VII. Z STREET is dedicated to constantly and consistently declaring and affirming the facts that reveal the fallacious narratives of Terrorist Entities, Terrorists, and their supporters undermining the legal, moral and historical right of the Jewish State to exist in peace and security without physical or verbal assault against its sovereignty or legitimacy."
Fact check: The "narratives" are true, and so-called "Terrorists" are, in fact, peace-loving people who by law may defend themselves when attacked.
"VIII. Z STREET insists that terrorists or other threats against Israel be unequivocally condemned, and that those members of the world community failing to actively condemn those threats also be branded as active or passive supporters of a second genocide against the Jewish people."
Fact check: Israel is the region's real terrorist threat.
"IX. Z STREET declares that Israel's respect for women's, religious and other minorities' rights, provides a welcome beacon - particularly in the Middle East - to be acknowledged and respected by all people of good will."
Fact check: Israel promotes Zionist extremism, demeans Arabs and Islam, and calls Muslims "Islamofascists."
"X. Z STREET recognizes the existence of 22 officially Muslim countries and 19 Christian countries, whose status the world does not challenge, while only Israel, the Jewish State, is demonized for asserting its legitimate right to be a religion-affiliated State, and which religion, Judaism, is the world's oldest monotheistic faith."
Fact check: Israel denies equal rights to its non-Jewish citizens, a practice found nowhere else in the civilized world.
"XI. Z STREET recognizes the value of other Zionist organizations whose activities include lobbying, producing publications, the sponsorship of scholars and scholarship centers, honoring generous donors and/or other important programs. Z STREET is not intended to supercede those other Zionist organizations. Z STREET is intended to serve as an alternative to many mainstream and other Jewish organizations that, to meet donors' requirements or for ideological reasons, cannot affirm the principles set out in the Z STREET Charter."
Fact check: All Zionist organizations are extremist, hateful, and preach Jewish supremacy over Islam and Muslims.
"XII. Z STREET has no need to, and will not negotiate with, nor seek to gain the approval from, any government, Israeli or Diaspora organization, or individuals supporting the diminution or weakening of Israel either because of ideological conviction, animosity towards a strong, Jewish State, cowardice, or the misguided belief that compromise with Terrorist Entities can lead to peace in the Middle East or global peace."
Fact check: Like Israel, Z Street is uncompromisingly hard line, extremist, militant and racist.
"XIII. Z STREET will serve as an educational force that will FIGHT WITH FACTS. Z STREET undergirds its positions with facts and provides that essential ingredient to exponentially increasing its membership ranks."
Fact check: Z Street distorts facts to fit its ideology and attract new extremist members.
"XIV. Z STREET is a new, entirely volunteer organization for those who affirm the foregoing and dedicate themselves to upholding and ensuring respect for these principles. Its primary purpose of which is to provide a proud banner for Zionists behind which to rally."
Fact check: Z Street supports Zionist extremism, militancy and racism. It demeans other views and affirms that "Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people," no others, "and must remain a Jewish state." It challenges critics as neo-Nazis and calls persons, groups, or entities defending themselves against Israeli aggression "terrorists." It champions Jewish exceptionalism and demeans Arabs as inferior Islamofascists.
It believes Jews have colonization rights to dispossess indigenous Arabs for a "greater Israel" in all Judea, Samaria, the Golan, Jerusalem and Gaza.
Z Street's Opposition to J Street
Z Street was founded to counter more moderate Jewish organizations like Americans for Peace Now and J Street, a US-based Israeli advocacy group. Founded (in April 2008) by its Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami, it calls itself "The new address for Middle East peace and security (as) the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement" and says:
"(It) was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. (It) support(s) a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the US role in the region."
It represents Jews and non-Jews "who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own - two states living side-by-side in peace and security....based on the 1967 borders with agreed reciprocal land swaps (and) resolution of the refugee issue within the new Palestinian state and in current host countries."
It supports "a new regional approach to cooperation and security;" diplomatic solutions over military ones; multilateral conflict resolution, including with Iran; an equitable Israeli-Syrian peace agreement; dialogue instead of confrontation; and for America to provide leadership to achieve it.
It "oppose(s) alliances with the religious right or any radical religious ideologues in the name of supporting Israel as well as efforts to demean and fan fears of Islam or of Muslims." It omits Zionism or Zionist goals in its Statement of Principles, Issues, Policy, and Actions.
Executive Director Ben-Ami held a number of senior positions as Bill Clinton's Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor and Howard Dean's presidential campaign Policy Director. He's also been a senior vice president at Fenton Communications and was communications director for the pro-Israeli New Israel Fund. His father was born in Israel, and much of his family still lives there.
On October 27, Z Street supporters plan a pro-Israeli White House rally at the same time J Street holds its first annual meeting in Washington - the organization it accuses of "Treason."
Co-founder Marcus said, "the presence of Z Street will ensure that the true Zionist voice will be heard: that we will not stand by quietly as apartheid is imposed on Jews in the Israeli territories, and we will not stand by quietly as the Iranians continue racing madly towards obtaining weapons to wipe whole peoples off the globe while politicians send polite letters and invitations to parties."
Co-founder Taylor added: "This grass roots effort will compete for media attention with the slick packaging of several well-funded anti-Zionist organizations (specifically J Street), and unless those of us who are committed to maintaining a strong, unified Jewish State of Israel stand up and speak out together, the weak will continue to appear strong and the strong will continue to appear weak."
In October on Washington streets, Z Street's extremism will be vocal in full public view against J Street's message of peaceful resolution and equity for all sides of the Middle East conflict.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time featuring cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. :: Article nr. 56245 sent on 22-jul-2009 16:08 ECT www.uruknet.info?p=56245
I analyzed Israel's sovereignty mainly from the angles of internal and external sovereignty recognition. However, there are more angles to the issue.
On Israel's Borders
One of the characteristics of sovereignty is territory, though it is not an essential one as shown in the first article of this series. However, the vast majority of what we call "sovereign entities" (again see the first article for a clarification of that) do have a territory, even if a small one as the Holy See and the Order of Malta do. If we are talking of territory, then implicitly we are doing so also of borders. What is the situation of Israel's borders?
These were basically established by the British Mandate of 1922 and were based on the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916; which divided the Ottoman Empire territories in the Middle East between the UK and France. However, things did change since then. The borders with Egypt and Jordan have been formalized in the peace agreements with these countries in 1979 and 1994 respectively. They gave up the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, creating so an undefined border between Israel and Palestine (the last being represented by the Palestinian Authority).
The border with Lebanon was based on the 1949 Armistice Agreement, though Israel had several times ignited tensions along an area known as Shabaa Farms on the former border between Lebanon and Syria. In year 2000, the UN defined what is known the Blue Line as the IDF retreat border – this is different from the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice Agreement line. In this respect, there is some ambiguity also along this border.
The borders with Syria are not settled, Israel still occupies the Golan Heights. It even annexed them unilaterally in 1981.
No Israeli decision defines its own borders. Israel has no Constitution, so the borders cannot be defined there. There is no other formal government or general referendum decision concerning the country's borders. That is exceptional and must have some repercusions on other areas of life.
Unluckily, it didn't demand an Herculean effort from my side to find the result of that.
On First and Second Class Citizens
In the second article of theis series, I commented about "Who is a Jew?," an important issue in a country giving automatic and immediate citizenship to any Jew arriving at it. However, what does the last argument mean? How can you arrive at an entity with no recognized or defined borders?
"Who is a Jew?" is a key issue in modern Israel. However, no less important is asking: "Who is a citizen?" I was tempted here to elaborate on the topics presented on the first articles of the series, but going into legalistic terms would make the point less clear than giving a few examples of the sins committed on a daily base by the State of Israel toward many people, some of them recognized by the state as citizens and some not.
"Who is a citizen?" has no clear answer in Israel.
Only citizens within the State of Israel are allowed to vote for the parliament. But the state has no defined borders, so what is a legal vote? Woops, let's not talk about that openly on the Israeli media.
A settler living in the West Bank is even by the State of Israel definition outside the state borders. Yet, he is allowed to vote and gets social benefits; at the same time, another Israeli citizen living in Egypt or Greece or the US does not have these benefits. A mystery.
A Palestinian Arab with Israeli citizenship living in Jaffa cannot marry a Palestinian Arab from Jenin in the West Bank. Marriage is a very basic human right, though not in the eyes of the Israeli Supreme Court. A geographical mystery.
A Jew that converted to Christianity and marries a Christian woman in a church wouldn't get his marriage recognize. His bastard sons would not enjoy the social benefits normal children in the country enjoy. Unless he marries outside Israel and returns with the happy bride. Another mystery, though I admit the judges are smarter than lesser humans. No normal human can even follow the logic of such a decision.
The truth is that I have no wish to solve these mysteries. Israel must adopt international standards of law and a constitution as it promised the UN in exchange for the recognition of its sovereignty. Otherwise, having broken the UN resolution and having failed to sign a social contract with its citizens, IT HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST AS A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY.
Accusations of conspiracy to murder continue to reverberate across the Palestinian arena, threatening to break the Fatah movement in two, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
Farouk Kaddumi's recent bombshell accusations that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan, had connived with Israel to murder late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continue to reverberate throughout the Palestinian arena.
The allegations made by the second highest-ranking leader of the Fatah organisation during an impromptu press conference in Amman last week, have overshadowed the Hamas-Fatah rift and even the standoff over Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. The increasingly ugly showdown between Fatah's two divergent camps is already polarising the group at all levels, including the grassroots level, with activists pointing fingers of accusation at either Kaddumi or Abbas.
Last week, the PA government decided to close down the West Bank offices of Al-Jazeera TV after the Qatari-based satellite channel carried live Kaddumi's press conference from Amman. The Western-backed Ramallah-based government accused Al-Jazeera of "broadcasting false news, bias, incitement and fostering division and disunity in the Palestinian arena". The decision drew mostly negative reactions from several quarters, especially Palestinian civil society and the journalistic community, prompting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to rescind the decision a few days later.
Clearly disquieted by the accusations, Palestinian leader Abbas lashed out at Kaddumi, accusing him of spreading cheap lies in order to abort the convening of Fatah's long overdue Sixth Conference, slated to take place in Bethlehem in the first week of August. Similarly, Abbas allies have been attacking and fulminating against Kaddumi, calling him names such as "senile", "liar", and "saboteur". The West Bank Fatah leadership has asked the movement's Central Council to discuss Kaddumi's "canards" and "eject him from our ranks".
Unfazed by the sabre rattling from Ramallah, Kaddumi reasserted the "veracity and authenticity" of the minutes of the March 2004 meeting in West Jerusalem during which the alleged plot to poison Arafat was discussed. Kaddumi has also reportedly hinted that he possesses further incriminating evidence against Abbas and Dahlan that further corroborates and consolidates his earlier charges. The secretary-general of Fatah also challenged Abbas and his allies to prove their loyalty to the group.
"You don't own Fatah, you have hijacked Fatah for the purpose of amassing wealth and stealing money. You have swerved off the true path of Fatah, the path of resistance and liberation, and chosen to be a pawn in the hands of our enemies," Kaddumi said.
As the two contentious camps within Fatah continue to trade recriminations, former political advisor to Arafat Bassam Abu Sharif reasserted charges he made shortly after Arafat's death in November 2004. Abu Sharif claimed that Arafat was killed as a result of a chemical substance provided by Israeli intelligence.
Abu Sharif argued that Israeli soldiers manning a roadblock outside Ramallah stopped the Palestinian ambulance that had regularly brought food and medicine to the besieged Palestinian leader. "When the soldiers were searching the ambulance, while its Palestinian staff was kept away, they substituted a medicine which Arafat had been taking with an identical substitute containing a chemical poison. This is how Arafat got sick and eventually succumbed to his illness."
Hamas's politburo chief Khaled Meshaal almost died in Amman in 1997 when Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists smacked a chemical substance into his ear. The two agents were captured and then-King Hussein of Jordan threatened to sever ties with Israel, forcing the Israeli government, headed at the time by Binyamin Netanyahu, to provide the antidote that saved Meshaal's life.
On Arafat, while Abu Sharif's hypothesis is mostly speculative in nature and may prove impossible to verify, the fact that the life of the leader of the Palestinian people is entrusted to Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks and checkpoints speaks volumes about the nature of the PA and its near total subservience to Israel.
Meanwhile, Arafat's widow, Suha, has been quoted as saying that "Israel was the only suspect in the death of my husband." Suha cleared Abbas and Dahlan of any wrongdoing, saying that they were Arafat's comrades. Most observers in occupied Palestine find it hard to rely on Suha's remarks, on the grounds that she often appeared detached from political realities in Palestine, living a lavish lifestyle in Paris while her husband was languishing under Israeli siege in Ramallah.
This is not to say that Kaddumi's accusations ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. But there is little doubt that the Kaddumi bombshell will cast a dark shadow on deliberations at Fatah's Sixth Congress when -- and if -- convened. It is expected that Abbas will try to take advantage of the charged atmosphere and the fact that anti-Abbas delegates are largely based outside occupied Palestine or in the Gaza Strip and are unlikely to attend the conference in Bethlehem.
However, a conference at which Abbas and his allies enjoy absolute hegemony will only deepen and widen the existing chasm between various camps within Fatah. More to the point, Kaddumi might resort to holding a rival Fatah conference of his own, possibly in Damascus or Beirut. If this were to happen, Fatah would disintegrate into two camps, one based abroad and enjoying "revolutionary legitimacy" and backed by Syria and Iran, and probably Qatar, and the other coalesced into the PA and enjoying "international legitimacy" and backed by the US, EU and the so-called moderate Arab regimes.
Finally, the success of the Bethlehem conference will also depend to a large extent on the cooperation of the Hamas movement. Hamas, which has so far opted to remain outside the Kaddumi-Abbas confrontation, has hinted that it may not allow Fatah delegates from the Gaza Strip to leave for the West Bank if PA security agencies continue to round up and persecute Hamas leaders and activists and if hundreds of Hamas detainees are not released. Since the PA is unlikely to release these detainees, mainly because there is a strong lobby within Fatah against rapprochement with Hamas, it is probable that very few Fatah delegates from Gaza, if any, will make it to the West Bank.
The "Israeli factor" is also relevant. Israel has an established policy of barring Gaza residents from entering the West Bank as a matter of principle. Undoubtedly this, too, will be an important factor militating for or against the convening of the conference, as well as its success.
The Scandal featured here surrounding allegations made by Farouq al Qaddoumi against the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership continues to make waves across the Palestinian political landscape.
Qaddoumi heads the PLO politburo and Fateh’s Central Committee. Last week he released a document that implicated current PA president Abu Mazen and his henchman Mohammed Dahlan in Israeli intentions to poison former PA president Yasser Arafat. The damning allegations were a frontal attack on the legitimacy of Abu Mazen and Dahlan, who remains a powerful, albeit controversial figure in its backrooms, despite not currently holding any governmental position. Qaddoumi’s allegations have weight to them because he is one of the last remaining, heavy-hitting Palestinian revolutionary figures from the era when the PLO was established, and one of a handful of surviving founder’s of Fateh. The allegations also cast a shadow over the upcoming August 4 Fateh Conference to be held in Bethlehem, raising questions about the extent to which the matter will genuinely be investigated internally, and if needed, whether Abu Mazen and Dahlan will be held accountable by the party’s base.
It is first necessary to update developments in this case to see where things have been heading.
The pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera conducted a live interview with Qaddoumi on July 16 in which he reiterated that the document he presented was indeed genuine. Qaddoumi claimed he had hoped to release the document at the upcoming Fateh Conference but was forced to release it now because Abu Mazen decided - in an illegitimate and unilateral manner, according to Qaddoumi - to hold the conference in the West Bank. Qaddoumi argues that this essentially prevents members from Fateh who live outside of Palestine from participating in the conference. Elements of the diasporic Palestinian leadership, including Qaddoumi, refused to return to Palestine in 1993 after the signing of the Oslo Accords, because they fundamentally disagreed with them. Qaddoumi also objects to holding the conference in areas where Israeli occupation troops essentially do as they please - entering and arresting who they want - though nominally Bethlehem is under PA control. The concern over holding the conference in Bethlehem extends beyond Qaddoumi though, as elements of the movement are still wanted by Israel and fear arrest if the conference is actually held there. Rumors have circulated that Abu Mazen is extending invitations and using his influence with Israel to have his loyalists who reside outside Palestine, return for the conference, as a means to consolidate his supporting camp within the party.
A couple of other pieces of information have also been thrown into the mix.
Qaddoumi still refuses to reveal how he obtained the minutes of the secret meeting in which the plan to poison Arafat was supposedly hatched. But he does claim to have spoken to Arafat about it, confirming receipt of the document. Qaddoumi apparently tried to convince Arafat to leave the country, but the latter insisted on dying like a martyr without turning back on his beliefs.
Other Arabic news sources are reporting separate interviews with Qaddoumi in which the latter has threatened to release more information, saying, “Now I say to them [the Fateh Executive Committee and the Central Committee, who have harshly criticized Qaddoumi for airing the document:] ‘what would be your response if I released an audio recording in the voice of President Arafat based upon his [posthumous] request, in which he says the same things that I have said?’”
Qaddoumi has yet to release any new evidence. But if he indeed has an audio recording of Arafat, it would certainly raise the stakes for all concerned, adding weight to his allegations, which by nature are difficult to substantiate. Rather than clarify matters, Qaddoumi’s allegations have tended to throw up a lot of other questions surrounding how he got the meeting minutes in the first place, why he waited so long to release them, and what he intends to get out of the whole affair.
In this regard, Qaddoumi’s allegations appear to re-enforce pre-existing divisions in the Palestinian political theater, with PA stalwarts defending Abu Mazen, and the political opposition, primarily Hamas, believing they have credence.
Inside Fateh - where it really matters - the picture is murkier. Five branches of the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, Fateh’s armed wing in the West Bank and Gaza, released a joint statement on July 18 in which they pledge allegiance to Qaddoumi and support maneuvers to remove Abu Mazen and Dahlan from the leadership of the party and the PA. But the party’s main organs remain in the hands of Abu Mazen, who has used them to paint Qaddoumi as a senile relic of a bygone era. The PA leadership has also been supported by more independent figures who defend the innocence of the current Palestinian leadership.
Mahmoud Damra, one of Arafat’s personal body guards during his besiegement in the Muqata’a and currently a prisoner in Israel, and Arafat’s former political adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, have both rejected the claim that Abu Mazen had anything to do with Arafat’s death.
Abu Sharif suggested the intriguing theory that Arafat was indeed poisoned, but the work was all Israel’s. He claims that Israel knew Arafat was taking medication at the time and at one point stopped an ambulance headed to deliver his serum. After briefly detaining the ambulance staff, Israel replaced Arafat’s authentic medication with one that contained poison, eventually leading to its ingestion by the leader and his eventual death. Abu Sharif has referenced similar Israeli assassination methods in the past, including the killing of the legendary Palestinian guerrilla figure Wadi’ Haddad in Iraq in the 1977 with a box of poisoned Belgian chocolates, passed through an Israeli collaborator. The poison resulted in a degenerative blood illness, which eventually killed Haddad in similar mysterious circumstances. There is also the well-known case of how the Israeli Mossad tried to use poison to kill Hamas chief Khaled Mishal in Jordan in 1997. Mishal survived the assassination only because the Israeli operatives were embarrassingly caught, and Israel was forced to provide an antidote in exchange for their release.
The volley of PA counter attacks against Qaddoumi has been incessant. Al Jazeera reports that Abu Mazen is preparing to gather the existing members of the PLO Executive Committee to remove Qaddoumi from his post in the PLO. Further preparations are underway to use the convening of Fateh’s conference to remove him from Fateh’s Central Committee. There are even reports that the PA pressured Jordan to expel Qaddoumi from the country, to Syria.
The PA also ordered Al Jazeera closed for three days for publicizing the Qaddoumi affair, though it was by no means the only television station to do so. It seems that Abu Mazen wished to send Al Jazeera a message not to use its broad and powerful reach to sway opinion in the run up to the conference, while also sending a forceful message to local Palestinian media, not to investigate and report on the affair. Most local media (besides those associated with Hamas) have toed the line, resulting in much of the Arabic media discussion on the matter deriving from outside the borders of territorial Palestine.
Indeed Abu Mazen, together with his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (a former World Bank and IMF official) are trying to run a tight ship in the West Bank, cracking down on any buds of dissent to their control over the territory. They are aided in their task by a new PA crack force trained in Jordan under U.S. General Keith Dayton. Each member is vetted by Israel to make sure they have a “clean” resumé. Hamas claims that more than 1100 of its members are currently held in PA detention facilities - about a tenth the number of prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The content of Qaddoumi’s document is indeed difficult to verify. Many of the basic elements of the document are not in fact new: we know the PA leadership meets on high levels to discuss “security matters,” and that this issue became of primary importance to the Palestinian leadership after the Intifada began, and especially since Hamas took control over Gaza in June 2007. “Security” is a euphemism for the PA monitoring Palestinian political factions and ensuring that no militant activity takes place against Israel and its occupation. Many Palestinians already see this as a form of collaboration with Israel, not only because Israel fails to recognize any Palestinian national rights, while continuing its occupation, building Jewish settlements, demolishing homes, confiscating land etc., but also because Israel has simply killed over 6000 Palestinians since the Intifada began, and it is hardly the time to cooperate on “security matters” with those who are killing the Palestinian popular leadership.
One way to parse what’s going on is to read Qaddoumi’s document carefully. Abu Mazen’s participation in the discussion is not actually as incriminating as one might think.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the one who raises the issue of killing Arafat and other resistance leaders. Abu Mazen plays a kind of restraining role to Sharon, essentially arguing that neither the marginalization of Arafat nor brute force will deter the resistance or help anyone. The only way to control the situation is to have Palestinians control their affairs and to get the Israeli army out of Palestinian cities.
This raises the possibility of tactics in negotiations, which could be playing out here as well, if the document is genuine.
The PA was most interested at the time in winning time, and hopefully an Israeli withdrawal on the ground. Dahlan and Abbas’ interventions in the discussion, though cynical and seemingly treasonous, are consistent in pushing for this end. Perhaps they presumed that Sharon anyway would act as he pleased, defending what he saw as Israel’s interests. The PA needed to bring about an Israeli withdrawal, so they could reorganize their ranks, which were severely fragmented by Israel’s blows. I don’t even see it as beyond Arafat to have sent Abu Mazen and Dahlan to the meeting with these directives in the first place, allowing them to say what needed to be said to bring about this desired result. He couldn’t have done so himself. But Dahlan and Abu Mazen could. Such short term opportunism characterized Arafat’s leadership style, as long as the movement (and his leadership over it) was able to survive.
In any respect, Israel’s strategy to extinguish the Intifada relied upon shaking the Palestinian leadership, showing them ‘who’s boss’, eliminating any ‘rebellious’ nationalist figures through assassination or imprisonment, and simply playing on the contradictions that emerged within the Palestinian elite as it struggled for its survival.
In this regard, it is difficult to assess how seriously Abu Mazen and Dahlan aspired to take advantage of Israeli maneuvers to prepare the ground for taking power from Arafat. No doubt Abu Mazen and Dahlan both had interests in pushing Arafat out of the way. And the tension did spill over to the extent that Abu Mazen in fact did resign as Prime Minister, because he believed he was not getting enough power from Arafat. But the question remains whether the duo would go the length of cooperating with Israel towards that end. Israel’s maneuvers - including the assassination of resistance leaders from other factions, as well as from within Fateh - no doubt make Abu Mazen and Dahlan passive benefactors of Israel’s policies. But this is also not the same as participation in murder.
Time will tell what comes of the affair, and all eyes are set on what happens at Fateh’s conference. If Abu Mazen and his crew are able to assert leadership and control over the party, Qaddoumi and his allegations will be buried in history. But if elements of the party are determined to raise what happened in the waning days of Arafat’s rule, sticky questions will remain that threaten to split the party. Much will depend upon the composition of the conference itself, and to what extent Fateh opposition figures are allowed to participate. Additionally you have the movement’s most popular figure (Marwan Barghouti) sitting in an Israeli prison serving out a five-life term sentence, whose opinion is likely to have substantial weight in determining the trajectory of coming developments.
Who’s Laughing Now? Israeli Television Ad Sparks Anger
Well, it’s official. Israel’s largest cellphone company, Cellcom, is taking its controversial television ad off the air that fell on its face trying to put a playful twist on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It’s an ad campaign that came to its planned and natural end after some two weeks on the air, officials at the company assured me as they tried to downplay the rage it sparked from some Israelis - both Jewish and Arab - including lawmakers and journalists. A Facebook group was even formed in response with over 2,100 members is named “The New Cellcom Ad Also Made Me Nauseus”.
What — was — that?” I thought when I first saw it.
My eyes were transfixed on my television as it came to its bizarre conclusion. The scene: An Israeli army jeep pulls up in a front of a wall of soaring concrete slabs, part of the West Bank barrier that keeps Israelis on one side and Palestinians on the other. A soccer ball from the Palestinian side lands with a thunk on the jeep’s hood. Five soldiers in combat gear - helmets, flak jackets and all, race out and one kicks the ball over the wall. When the ball soars back to them, the soldiers let out a triumphant cheer. One of them, smiling widely, calls to fellow soldiers by cell phone with a brief update: “They’re here. The game is on”. Soon several jeeps follow and dozens have joined the game.
The nameless, faceless Palestinians on the other side of the wall are not seen, but an upbeat jingle in the background fades to a voiceover that tries to speak for them too: “Afterall, what are we all after? Just a little fun.”
Even for those with a good sense of black humor, the West Bank barrier makes for an interesting idea of fun. One rarely, if ever, sees any kind of depiction of it in popular Israeli media, which is why the ad’s scene caught my attention in the first place.
Ahmed Tibi, an Arab lawmaker in Israel’s parliament demanded Cellcom withdraw the ad, saying, “The barrier separates families and prevents children from reaching schools and clinics … Yet the advertisement presents the barrier as though it were just a garden fence in Tel Aviv.”
Indeed the gap in perceptions of a conflict viewed in vastly different ways by the two sides living it is what both the Cellcom ad and its subsequent comment managed to illuminate.
Here’s the company’s official response: “We do not deal in politics; we’re a communications company that connects people. The message of the campaign was that when people of any religion, race or gender want to communicate, they can do it in any situation. We have received many positive responses to the ad. The campaign was not intended to hurt or cynically offend anyone, or to take any political position.”
A Jewish Israeli acquaintance, who preferred not to be named, was so angry after seeing the ad that she immediately cancelled her Cellcom contract.
“I suppose the idea is that both sides are human, but what it shows is the complete disconnect experienced by Israelis. We don’t want to know what is going on there,” she said, referring to Palestinian life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
For Nadim Nashif, an Arab citizen of Israel living in Haifa who led a campaign against the ad, it was also an affront: “You don’t create this reality (of the barrier) and then make light of it.”
The question is how representative the ad was of the thinking of mainstream Israeli society. It clearly made some uncomfortable, even ill, according to the Facebook group. But for most it did not seem to register at all. Which I suppose, is an answer in itself.
In the first part of this series (Is Israel Sovereign?) I analyzed the facts that brought into existence the State of Israel. The inevitable conclusion was that the State of Israel is not sovereign because it lacks a social contract with its citizens. The last were never asked to agree, there was never neither a referendum nor a popular vote on the issue. David Ben Gurion didn’t have popular mandate to declare Israel’s independence on May 14, 1948.
Void of Legal Value
Israel’s Independence Declaration was printed in a very elegant fashion; but it has no legal value. Even its declarative value is questionable: it expresses only the opinion of those who signed it. They didn’t have the people’s mandate to do that and completely ignored the human rights issue, mainly because of Ben Gurion’s assessment that they needed the Orthodox Jews support for making a stable coalition government. However, the main reason it is void of value, is that the state itself denies it.
In the eyes of the State of Israel authorities, one of the problems of the declaration is that it promises: “freedom, justice and peace,” and “complete social and national equal rights to all its citizens without difference of religion, race or gender,” “securing freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture, will keep the Holy Places of all religions and will be faithful to the United Nations...” These are very uncomfortable promises. Until now, all the Israeli governments were based upon coalitions that included political parties that couldn’t agree to some of these promises. The main problems were imposed always by the Ultra Orthodox Jewish parties like Agudat Israel and Shas.
Avoiding the problem, the Knesset – the Israeli Parliament – claims the declaration is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the declaration contained just guiding principles, that it is not a constitutional law. Nowadays, Knesset laws are enforced even if they are inconsistent with the principles in the Declaration of Independence.
Placed in an uncomfortable position on the international arena, the Knesset legislated two basic laws – defined as base for a future constitution – namely the Human Dignity and Liberty and Freedom of Occupation ones – stating that "fundamental human rights in Israel will be honored.” However, these laws fail to give an exact definition.
Israel Broke the United Nations Conditions
Another landmine – in the eyes of the Israeli authorities – in the independence declaration is the claim that Israel will be faithful to the UN principles; this is another reason for the formal institutions of the State of Israel to declare it void of legal value. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into a Palestinian State, a Jewish one and special areas – like Jerusalem – under the direct administration of the UN.
An overlooked part of that decision was a formal minority rights protection system. The protection was to be enforced by the UN and the International Court of Justice. Thus twice in the declaration, Israel promises to be nice to the minorities; once explicitly by promising equality and second implicitly by promising to be faithful to the UN, which promised protection to those minorities.
Subsequently, Israel claimed these minority rights were constitutionally embodied as the fundamental law of the state of Israel through the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, and various letters addressed to the Secretary General. These assurances were the base for the General Assembly Resolution 273 (III) Admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations, from May 11, 1949.
Reality was very different. One irregularity – the lack of formal constitution, or any other type of social contract – gave birth to another.
Law of Return
The Law of Return gives automatic and immediate citizenship to every Jew arriving at Israel. A Jew is defined in that law as a person born Jew (with a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother), with a Jewish ancestry (with a Jewish father or grandfather) or a convert to Orthodox Judaism (Reform and Conservative converts are recognized only if performed outside the State of Israel, Messianic Jews are rejected). The base for this racist law is what is known as “jus sanguinis” in Latin, namely the “Blood Law” which was used in ancient times to attribute citizenship on the base of family relations. However, the Law of Return denies citizenship to Jews that have converted out of their free will. Did their blood change during the conversion process?
Later, the law was amended to include non-Jews relatives of Jews, but it never recognized the Right of Return of other ancestral denizens of the land that were expelled during the wars: the Palestinians. For them, “jus sanguinis” does not exist. Again, that is despite the earlier promises of equality. In a related type of discrimination, the Arab citizens of the State of Israel were under military government until 1966, while the Jewish were not.
An important point to keep in mind is that the Israeli citizens – regardless their ethnic background and religion – were never allowed to say their word. This discriminating principle was never put to democratic test. Due to its importance to the nature of the Israeli society, it should have been.
Who is a Jew?
The Law of Return gives citizenship to Jews arriving at Israel. However, an intrinsic flaw accompanies it: “Who is a Jew.” “If your mother was, or...” are the arguments presented by that law to answer the question. But they have created only a recursive trap; the same question would apply to the testifier of one’s “Jewishness,” ad infinitum. Who would testify for King David’s mother?
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which is part of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs and is controlled by the Ultra Orthodox Jewish parties, has been the authority deciding on “Who is a Jew” until now due to coalitional considerations, but this is a questionable practice. Non-Orthodox religious Jews do not accept it, because the ultra-Orthodox refuse to recognize their conversions. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that conversions performed by the last outside Israel must be recognized, but those inside Israel not.
What?
What? Is one’s religion dependant on geographical issues? Absurd as it seems, eleven of the most respected judges in Israel claimed that one’s conscience on the issue is irrelevant; your religion may be defined by your trajectory upon earth. They claimed that and are still considered wise; moreover, a whole country abides by this rule.
Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law
The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law from 2003 places age restrictions for the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship and residency permits to spouses of Israeli citizens, such that spouses who are inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are ineligible. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination unanimously approved a resolution stating that this law violated an international human rights treaty against racism on the grounds that the law is discriminatory because it disproportionately affects Israeli Arabs since Israeli Arabs are far more likely to have spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip than other Israeli citizens.
Yet, Israel continues to claim it is a democratic country securing the rights of minorities...
Again, Israel just ignores its own commitments towards its citizens and the international community.
Palestinian Right of Return
If speaking about the Law of Return, then the parallel Palestinians right must be assessed. This Right of Return was defined by the UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Article 11 of that resolution states:
“Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Judging by the results, it seems that Israel’s Independence Declaration promise to be faithful to the UN does not include this type of resolutions.
This right has been since then ratified several times. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236, from 1974 recognizes the Palestinian people's right to self determination, makes the contacts between the United Nations and the Palestine Liberation Organization official and added the "Question of Palestine" to the UN Agenda. It states that it: “Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return;”
Again, Israel just ignores its own commitments towards its citizens and the international community.
If that was not enough, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims that: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
Again, Israel just ignores it.
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country,” says the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Again, Israel just ignores it. Simply, the Palestinians are not Jews and thus are not recognized by the Law of Return. In my article "Is Quoting the Talmud Anti-Semitic?" I commented on the Orthodox Jews claim that non-Jews have no property rights:
The Talmud teaches in Baba Bathra, Folio 54b, that non-Jews have no property rights. Their possessions are "like unclaimed land in the desert." The passage appears on page 222 of the Soncino edition: "Rab Judah said in the name of Samuel: The property of a heathen is on the same footing as desert land; whoever first occupies it acquires ownership."
Doesn’t the occupation of Palestine appear now in a new light?
On Christian Russians, Palestinians and Settlers
On the other hand, Israel accepted massive numbers of non-Jews during various Aliyah waves. The most remarkable one was during the 1990’s when over a million people entered from the former USSR to Israel under the protection of the Law of Return. Orthodox sources claimed that well over a hundred thousand of them were Christians seeking to leave their former Communist. I have enjoyed underground Christmas meals with some of them; underground because openly celebrating the Prince of Peace is forbidden in Israel.
In another impossible angle of the Israeli reality, settlers in the West Bank live next to Palestinians. I have visited both. The Palestinians are void of citizenship, cannot move freely and cannot even marry their beloved ones if these are Israeli citizens (one case reached in 2006 the Supreme Court and the sublime and wise judges rejected the marriage). The settlers are outside the territory of the State of Israel, yet they enjoy all the regular rights of an Israeli citizen. In my exile location, I cannot vote for the Israeli Parliament because it is not within Israel; yet, the settlers can vote and marry whatever they want.
Discrimination and racism hiding under claims of democracy and equality.
Double Game
Israel plays a double game. Towards its citizens it claims the Declaration of Independence is not a binding document, but to the UN it states otherwise. The State of Israel is faithful neither to the UN nor to its citizens. The promise in the Declaration to create a Constitution for the new state is ignored.
In addition to the arguments presented in the article “Is Israel Sovereign?” claiming that Israel failed to fulfill the basic requirements for achieving sovereignty, we see here how it purposely failed the external requirements towards the UN – the provider of external recognition – and failed even its proposed social contract towards its citizens; “proposed” because it was never properly ratified and because Israel does not have a constitution even now. If these irregularities were all the existing problems, many would be tempted to say: “let it be, there are more serious things in life than an illegally founded country.”
However, as it has been shown, the list of violations goes on and on.
Israel openly breaks the condition upon which it was recognized as sovereign by the UN, and has not been awarded sovereignty by its own citizens, through a social contract.
Hence, Israel cannot be considered a sovereign entity. Such a situation opens the possibility for an international force to enforce human rights in the area. Technically, the State of Israel cannot object to that because it does not exist as a legal sovereign entity.
The international community and the UN should also adopt a clear policy for such rogue states; until now we see enforcement on some cases (Iraq) or apathy on others (Pol Pot’s Cambodia). Decency calls for letting people free to choose their own future. I call the UN to enforce democracy on the territories under the control of the State of Israel.
Jonathan Cook reports that Israel is setting up a special internet undercover team of paid workers posing as ordinary surfers to spread positive news about Israel on the web, with the BBC News website and Arabic websites high on its target list.
The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook may not be all that it seems.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel.
Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilized soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government’s line on the Middle East conflict.
“To all intents and purposes the internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project.
The existence of an “internet warfare team” came to light when it was included in this year’s Foreign Ministry budget. About 150,000 US dollars have been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year.
The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term hasbara, officially translated as “public explanation” but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organizations and initiatives that promote Israel’s image in print, on TV and online.
In an interview this month with the Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, Mr Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry’s hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Rona Kuperboim, a columnist for Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, denounced the initiative, saying it indicated that Israel had become a “thought-police state”.
She added that “good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved.”
Her column was greeted by several talkbackers asking how they could apply for a job with the Foreign Ministry’s team.
The project is a formalization of public relations practices the ministry developed specifically for Israel’s assault on Gaza in December and January.
“During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers,” Mr Shturman said.
“We gave them background material and hasbara material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the internet.”
The Israeli army also had one of the most popular sites on the video-sharing site YouTube and regularly uploaded clips, although it was criticized by human rights groups for misleading viewers about what was shown in its footage.
Mr Shturman said that during the war the ministry had concentrated its activities on European websites where audiences were more hostile to Israeli policy. High on its list of target sites for the new project would be the BBC News website and Arabic websites, he added.
Elon Gilad, who heads the internet team, told Calcalist that many people had contacted the ministry offering their services during the Gaza attack. “People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the internet.”
He suggested that there had been widespread government cooperation, with the ministry of absorption handing over contact details for hundreds of recent immigrants to Israel, who wrote pro-Israel material for websites in their native languages.
The new team is expected to increase the ministry’s close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a programme called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel.
Nasser Rego of Ilam, a group based in Nazareth that monitors the Israeli media, said Arab organizations in Israel were among those regularly targeted by hasbara groups for “character assassination”. He was concerned the new team would try to make such work appear more professional and convincing.
“If these people are misrepresenting who they are, we can guess they won’t worry too much about misrepresenting the groups and individuals they write about. Their aim, it’s clear, will be to discredit those who stand for human rights and justice for the Palestinians.”
When The National called the Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman, denied the existence of the internet team, though he admitted officials were stepping up exploitation of new media.
He declined to say which comments by Mr Shturman or Mr Gilad had been misrepresented by the Hebrew-language media, and said the ministry would not be taking any action over the reports.
Israel has developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to new media since it launched a “Brand Israel” campaign in 2005.
Market research persuaded officials that Israel should play up good news about business success, and scientific and medical breakthroughs involving Israelis.
Mr Shturman said his staff would seek to use websites to improve “Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity”.
David Saranga, head of public relations at Israel’s consulate-general in New York, which has been leading the push for more upbeat messages about Israel, argued last week that Israel was at a disadvantage against pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“Unlike the Muslim world, which has hundreds of millions of supporters who have adopted the Palestinian narrative in order to slam Israel, the Jewish world numbers only 13 million,” he wrote in Ynet.
Israel has become particularly concerned that support is ebbing among the younger generations in Europe and the United States.
In 2007 it emerged that the Foreign Ministry was behind a photo-shoot published in Maxim, a popular US men’s magazine, in which female Israeli soldiers posed in swimsuits. Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
These seven photos from the BBC clearly show why the Free Gaza movement will continue to send boats. The Palestinians of Gaza do not want handouts from the world. They want their freedom and they want the right to rebuild their shattered economy, shattered because Israel bombed them into the 18th century with the help of American money and support.
This "Silence of Shame" from the Americans, all of us, constitutes a willingness to participate in Israeli war crimes. It is up to us to contact our representatives, the President of the U.S., and our media to express our outrage over the slow-motion genocide of 1.5 million civilians in Gaza, enabled because we pay for it.
The world is beginning to see what Israel does. Supporting our voyages means that Palestinians in Gaza will have a route to the outside world that is not controlled by Israel or by their proxy, Egypt. It means they don't have to pay Israel or Egypt for supplies coming in, and they can export strawberries and flowers the way they once did, before Israel cruelly took everything away from them.
Sixty-one years of being refugees; forty-one years of depending on the international community... when will we say NO MORE to Israel.
Israel on Sunday rejected a United States demand to stop a building project in annexed east Jerusalem, in the latest dispute between the close allies over the prickly issue of Jewish settlements.
Memo to President Obama: what did I tell you, Mr. President?!?
Netanyahu has decided that his response to the request to halt this settlement is going to be to spit in your face, and tell you it's raining.
Of course, no matter how intently you're spat upon, you'll never stop sending those checks to Israel, right?!?
No matter how deeply Israel is publicly humiliating you and your administration, you'll just keep on sending those checks, and continuing to validate bad behavior on the part of the Israeli administration, right?!?
And what is wrong with this picture, Mr. President?!?
Everything.
The United States has told Israel to stop a building project in annexed east Jerusalem, in the latest dispute between the two allies over settlements, a senior Israeli official told AFP on Sunday.
Israel's ambassador in Washington Michael Oren was summoned to the State Department at the end of last week over the project, which aims to build housing units in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, the official said on condition of anonymity, confirming earlier media reports.
There was no immediate US comment on the reports.
Jerusalem city authorities have approved the construction plans for the project, which aims to build the units on the site of the Shepherd hotel in the neighbourhood. The works are financed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who has previously contributed to ultra-nationalist Jewish groups.
The international community considers Jewish neighbourhoods in mostly Arab east Jerusalem to be Israeli settlements and the issue is one of the main obstacles in the hobbled Middle East peace process.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed that part of the city in a move not recognised by the international community. It sees all of Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided" capital and does not consider construction in east Jerusalem to be settlements.
The Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state.
Under new US President Barack ObamaWashington has repeatedly pressed Israel to stop all settlement activity, something that hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far refused to do.
There are currently some 200,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem, home to some 268,000 Palestinians.
Israel's ambassador in Washington Michael Oren was summoned to the State Department at the end of last week over the project, which aims to build housing units in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, the official said on condition of anonymity, confirming earlier media reports.
At this point, if in fact there ever is a Palestinian state, with consistent Israeli encroachments on Palestinian lands, the state of Palestine won't be much larger than a postage stamp.
And this US posturing about settlements will win absolutely no concessions from Netanyahu.
The only thing Israel will understand will be when the checks, funded with your tax dollars stop until the settlements stop.
Of course, that will only happen when pigs fly.
The United States has told Israel to stop a building project in annexed east Jerusalem, in the latest dispute between the two allies over settlements, a senior Israeli official told AFP on Sunday.
Israel's ambassador in Washington Michael Oren was summoned to the State Department at the end of last week over the project, which aims to build housing units in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, the official said on condition of anonymity, confirming earlier media reports.
There was no immediate US comment on the reports.
Jerusalem city authorities have approved the construction plans for the project, which aims to build the units on the site of the Shepherd hotel in the neighbourhood. The works are financed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who has previously contributed to ultra-nationalist Jewish groups.
The international community considers Jewish neighbourhoods in mostly Arab east Jerusalem to be Israeli settlements and the issue is one of the main obstacles in the hobbled Middle East peace process.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed that part of the city in a move not recognised by the international community. It sees all of Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided" capital and does not consider construction in east Jerusalem to be settlements.
The Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state.
Under new US President Barack ObamaWashington has repeatedly pressed Israel to stop all settlement activity, something that hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far refused to do.
There are currently some 200,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem, home to some 268,000 Palestinians.
Please take a few minutes on Monday to call the Egyptian embassy in your country to demand the Rafah border be opened!
Since June 13, when International Movement to Open the Rafah Border members set their sit-in at the Rafah Gate, we witnessed the Egyptian authorities’ collaboration in the Gaza siege enforced by the Israeli government with the US an international community support.
Even after the Viva Palestina folks and some aid got into Gaza, the plight of the people waiting to get out or into Gaza has not changed,
Please call the Egyptian embassy Monday, July 20. Please spread this call far and wide. It will make a difference to so many Palestinians, And for those who can, come and join us at the Rafah Gate. Come and witness these tragedies at the border.
Below details of Egyptian embassies in 40 countries
Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa, Canada Phone: (613)234-4931, (613)234-4935 Fax: (613)234-4398 Email: egyptemb@sympatico.ca Office Hours: Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4 pm.
Egyptian Embassy in Beijing, China Phone: (8610) 6532 1825 Fax: (8610) 6532 5365 Email: eg_emb_bj@yahoo.com
Egyptian Embassy in Amman, Jordan Phone: 5605175 / 5605176 / 5605202 /5605203 Fax: 5604082 Email: egypt@tedata.net.jo, embegypt@tedata.net.jo Office Hours: Sunday to Thursday 9 a.m. - 4 p.m
Egyptian Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya Phone: 3870298-3870278-3870360 Fax: 3870383 Email: egypt@wananchi.com Office Hours: Embassy Working Hours: From 09:00 till 16:30
Egyptian Embassy in Benghazi, Libya Phone: 00218612232522 Fax: 00218612232523 Email: Egyptian_Consulate_Ben@yahoo.com Office Hours: Working Hours Daily from 8:30 am till 3:00 pm
Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan Phone: +92 (51) 2209072 or 2209082 Fax: (+92) 51 2279552 Office Hours: Monday to Friday, 10:00am to 12:00 pm
Egyptian Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal Phone: +351-1-213018301 Fax: +351-213017909 Email: egiptembassy@ip.pt
Egyptian Embassy in Bucharest, Romania Phone: (4021) 2110938 - 2110939 Fax: (4021) 2100337 Email: Embassyofegypt@gmail.com Office Hours: The Chancellery Monday to Friday; from 0900 to 1700
Egyptian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey Phone: 09003124261026 / 00903124682240 / 00903124266132 Fax: 0090312- 4270099 Email: egyembassyankara@yahoo.com, eg.emb_ankara@mfa.gov.eg Office Hours: Working Hours of the embassy:- 9 am -4 pm
Egyptian Embassy in Washington D.C., United States Phone: (+1) (202) 8955400 Fax: (+1) (202) 2444319 Email: embassy@egyptembdc.org
Egyptian Consulate in Chicago, United States Phone: (312) 828-9162-3-4 Fax: (312) 828-9167 Email: egyptianembassy@cantv.com.ve Office Hours: 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Egyptian Consulate in Houston, United States Phone: (713)961 4915 (713)9614916 (713)9614407 Fax: (713) 9613868 Office Hours: = From 9:00 AM Till 3:00 PM
AIPAC becomes foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as domestic lobby.
By Jeff Gates
LOUISIANA - In the early 1960s, Senator William J. Fulbright fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The Council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: a foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby.
Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: it’s all in the math. And in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on US policy-making by dozens of ‘domestic’ organizations that now compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force.The political math was enabled by Senator John McCain whose support for all things Israeli ensured him the GOP nomination to succeed Christian-Zionist G.W. Bush. McCain’s style of campaign finance reform proved a perfect fit for the Diaspora-based fundraising on which the lobby relies. Co-sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, this change in federal election law typifies how Israeli influence became systemic.
‘McCain-Feingold’ raised the amount (from $1,000 to $2,300) that candidates can receive from individuals in primary and general elections. A couple can now contribute a combined $9,200 to federal candidates: $4,600 in each of the primary and general elections. Primary elections, usuall low-budget, are particularly easy to sway.
Importantly for the Diaspora, this change also doubled the funds candidates can receive without regard to where those contributors reside. A candidate in Iowa, say, may have only a few pro-Israeli constituents. When campaign support is provided by a nationwide network of pro-Israelis, that candidate can more easily be persuaded to support policies sought by Tel Aviv.
Diaspora-based fundraising has long been used by the lobby with force-multiplying success to shape US foreign policy. Under the guise of reform, John McCain doubled the financial resources that the lobby can deploy to elect and retain its supporters.
Fulbright was Right
The influence-peddling process works like this. Candidates are summoned for in-depth AIPAC interviews. Those found sufficiently committed to Israel’s agenda are provided a list of donors likely to “max out” their campaign contributions. Or the process can be made even easier when AIPAC-approved candidates are given the name of a “bundler.”
Bundlers raise funds from the Diaspora and bundle those contributions to present them to the candidate. No quid pro quo need be mentioned. After McCain-Feingold became law in 2003, AIPAC-identified bundlers could raise $1 million-plus for AIPAC-approved candidates simply by contacting ten like-minded supporters. Here’s the math:
The bundler and spouse “max out” for $9,200 and call ten others, say in Manhattan, Miami, and Beverly Hills. Each of them max out ($10 x $9,200) and call ten others for a total of 11. [111 x $9,200 = $1,021,200.]
Imagine the incentive to do well in the AIPAC interview. One call from the lobby and a candidate can collect enough cash to mount a credible campaign in most Congressional districts. From Tel Aviv’s perspective, that political leverage is leveraged yet again because fewer than ten percent of the 435 House races are competitive in any election cycle (typically 35 to 50).
Additional force-multipliers come from: (a) sustaining this financial focus over multiple cycles, (b) using funds to gain and retain seniority for those serving on Congressional committees key to promoting Israeli goals, and (c) opposing any candidates who question those goals.
Jewish Achievement reports that 42% of the largest political donors to the 2000 election cycle were Jewish, including four of the top five. That compares to less than 2% of Americans who are Jewish. Of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, 25% are Jewish according to Michael Steinhardt, a key funder of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC was led by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman when he resigned in 2000 to run as vice president with pro-Israeli presidential candidate Al Gore.
Money was never a constraint. Pro-Israeli donors were limited only by how much they could lawfully contribute to AIPAC-screened candidates. McCain-Feingold raised a key limit. The full impact of this foreign influence has yet to be tallied. What’s known, however, is sufficient to apply the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Of the top 50 neoconservatives who advocated war in Iraq, 26 were Jewish (52%).
Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, remains one of the more notable recipients of funds. In 1948, he was trailing badly in the polls and in fundraising. His prospects brightened dramatically in May after he recognized as a legitimate state an enclave of Jewish extremists who originally planned to settle in Argentina before putting their sights on Palestine.
That recognition was opposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the bulk of the diplomatic corps, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency and numerous distinguished Americans, including moderate and secular Jews concerned at the troubles that were certain to follow. Not until 1984 was it revealed that a network of Jewish Zionists had funded Truman’s campaign by financially refueling his whistle-stop campaign train with $400,000 in cash ($3 million in 2009 dollars).
To buy time on the public’s airwaves, money raised from the Israel lobby’s network is paid to media outlets largely owned or managed by members of the same network. Presidents, Senators and Congressmen come and go but those who collect the checks rack up the favors that amass lasting political influence.
The US system of government is meant to ensure that members of the House represent the concerns of Americans who reside in Congressional districts—not a nationally dispersed network (a Diaspora) committed to advancing the agenda of a foreign nation. Federal elections are meant to hold Senators accountable to constituents who reside in the states they represent—not out-of-state residents or a foreign government.
In practical effect, McCain-Feingold hastened a retreat from representative government by granting a nationwide network of foreign agents disproportionate influence over elections in every state and Congressional district. Campaign finance ‘reform’ enabled this network to amass even more political clout—wielding influence disproportionate to their numbers, indifferent to their place of residence and often contrary to America’s interests.
This force-multiplier is now wielded in plain sight, with impunity and under cover of free speech, free elections, free press and even the freedom of religion. Therein lies the perils of an entangled alliance that induced the US to invade Iraq and now seeks war with Iran. By allowing foreign agents to operate as a domestic lobby, the US was induced to confuse Zionist interests with its own.
Just as anti-Semitism became official policy in Germany in the mid 1930s, it is seems hostility toward Arabs, including Israel’s own 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, is becoming a de facto official policy of the Israeli state.
This ominous orientation is being constantly promoted by a number of manifestly racist cabinet ministers and Knesset members who declare openly that their aim is to make everyone in Israel "submit to the Jewish nature of the state."
The brash racism is now permeating through the entire apparatus of the Jewish state, from the police, to the justice system, to the army, to the educational system and, of course, the media.
Last week, Israeli courts showed off their racist credentials when two Israeli settlers, a murderer and a would-be murderer were acquitted of murdering a Palestinian and seriously wounding two others.
In the first case, a West Jerusalem judge acquitted a Jewish settler named Ze’ev Braude who had shot and seriously injured two unarmed Palestinians in al-Khalil ( Hebron ) several months ago.
The settler was caught on video shooting at the two Palestinians who were pleading to Israeli troops to stop rampaging settlers from attacking their homes and families. The settlers were vandalizing Arab property and trying to set homes on fire in protest against the evacuation by the army of Jewish squatters who had seized an Arab building a few years earlier.
Braude’s lawyer reportedly asked for "classified information" which he said would help clear his client of any wrongdoing. However, instead of meeting the lawyer’s request, the attorney-general decided to drop all charges against Braude. Thus the would-be killer, who had shot and seriously injured two innocent Palestinians, was effectively declared innocent.
In the second case, a Jewish farmer by the name of Shai Dromi was acquitted of manslaughter by a Bir al Saba’a (Beer Shiva) court despite damning evidence indicting him.
In 2007, Dromi shot and killed a Bedouin "infiltrator," claiming that he was trying to steal his livestock.
Racist system
One doesn’t have to be a great expert on Israel to be able to describe the Israeli justice system as inherently racist, being based on religious-ethno centricism.
Indeed, had the victims been Jewish, there is not the slightest doubt that the perpetrators would have been given harsh prison sentences, without a chance for parole for decades.
However, in a state that murders innocent children at will "for self-defense" and lies as often as it breathes, this type of justice ought to be viewed as being within the normal order of things.
Indeed, Israel itself, one might argue perfectly rightly, is a crime against humanity, having been created on the ruins of another people, the Palestinians.
Hence, it is only "natural" and "normal" that Israeli courts would deal with utmost flaccidity and utter leniency with Jewish perpetrators of crimes as long as the victim is not a member of the "holy tribe."
This tradition goes back to the establishment of Israel more than 62 years when a given Jewish murderer of a Palestinian was fined a dime on the ground that the life of a non-Jew wasn’t worth more than a dime.
A few years ago, an Israeli soldier who was serving in southern Gaza murdered a Palestinian school child, Iman al Hums, as she was going to school.
The soldier, dubbed Captain R. shot and seriously wounded the young girl, and as he saw her agonize and wallow in pain, he walked toward her, empting an entire magazine of bullets into her tender body to make sure that she was dead and didn’t pose a threat to his life.
The practice is still widely practiced in the Israeli army and is known as "verifying the kill."
The reaction of the Israeli justice system to this event was very telling, indeed.
For instead of prosecuting and punishing the murderer, the Israeli army actually awarded him thousands of dollars in damages he claimed he deserved because his reputation was tarnished by the media.
Westerners, especially North Americans, who have been consuming Zionist lies for decades may be prompted to think that the above-mentioned cases are an aberration and in no way represent Israel’s general behaviors.
However, the truth, which Israel and her supporters strive to hide from the eyes of the world, is that the Israeli justice system is inherently and profoundly racist, to put it mildly, especially when non-Jews, particularly Palestinians, are involved.
In recent years, hundreds of settler judges and others affiliated with extremist terrorist Jewish groups, such as the Kahana group, Gush Emunim and Chabad infiltrated the Israeli justice system.
These people are indoctrinated in the Nazi-like ideology that Jews are genetically and humanly superior than non-Jews and that Jewish lives are worth more than non-Jewish lives.
Hence, when a Jew and a non-Jew appear in court, the Jewish judge feels obliged to take all these considerations into account and refrain, as much as possible, from passing stiff punishments against Jewish defendants.
This is often done by meticulously searching for or even concocting extenuating circumstances, or by finding a procedural loophole, that would make the judge seriously reduce the proscribed punishment for the Jewish defendant or acquit him of any wrongdoing.
Israel claims to be a western country, a democracy and a state where the rule of law is upheld.
Well, this trinity of lies should be obvious for anyone who has had the opportunity to know Israel first-hand.
But, there is always a certain level of "veracity" in these claims. In Israel , the rule of law is indeed upheld just as the rule of law was also upheld in Nazi Germany .
But the question remains, what laws are exactly being upheld?
PIC - The Ministry for Prisoners' affairs stated in a recent report that throughout the month of June the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) continued a campaign of kidnappings in all parts of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.
They seized more than 380 Palestinians, as well as four Egyptians in the Negev region on the grounds that they had crossed the Egyptian-Palestinian boundaries and entered a military zone. That is in addition to hundreds of workers kidnapped from inside the Green Line.
Riyad al-Ashqar, the director of the information office of the Ministry, clarified that last month marked a major escalation by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) against Palestinian fishermen. Gunboats abducted 16 Palestinian fishermen and took them to the port of Ashdod for questioning on matters related to the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. They are pressured to become informants in exchange for permission to return to fishing.
He added that the occupation kidnapped, in an unprecedented incident, the first of its kind, an infant, Muhammad Musa (4 years old), at the pretext that he had been throwing stones at police cars. A total of more than 31 children were abducted, including three children under the age of 12 from the village of Hizma, to the northeast of Jerusalem.
He also pointed out that the occupation kidnapped three women. One of them, Nahed Talib Farhat of Ramallah, was tortured after being kidnapped at the Atara checkpoint north of Ramallah.
She was attacked and beaten by soldiers, dragged on the ground, trodden underfoot, and blindfolded and handcuffed before being transported to prison. Not only that; the house of a deputy in the Legislative Council, Dr. Mariam Saleh, was broken into and searched. Her son Salah was kidnapped, after being assaulted and beaten, along with his brother, Abdullah, and his mobile phone was confiscated along with some documents.
Sick Prisoners Al-Ashqar pointed out that prison authorities continued to show no respect for the lives of sick prisoners in the prisons. This has led to the deteriorating health of many of them and has endangered the lives of some due to the failure to provide them necessary treatment. The prisoner Munadil Sharqawi, from Jenin, lapsed into a full coma in Megiddo Prison after failing to receive proper medical treatment for months on end.
Meanwhile, doctors announced that the prisoner Imad al-Deen Zu'rub, of Khan Yunis, has been diagnosed with cancer. He had been suffering from swollen glands under the armpits and in the groin for a number of years, but throughout that period the prison administration failed to provide him the necessary treatment or even a proper examination, which gave the cancer time to spread.
Al-Ashqar continued: Two operations performed in Ramle Prison Hospital on the prisoner Mahmoud Sanakra (age 26), from the Balata refugee camp, failed to ease the pain of spinal discs that ruptured during torture in the course of his interrogation. Another prisoner, Atif Mahmood Wuraidat of Hebron, has suffered a precipitous decline in health as a result of heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Al-Ashqar pointed out that the prisoner Ali Mahmood Safoori of Jenin has undergone serious disfigurement as a result of skin tumors spreading across his face and body for several months; meanwhile, the prison administration of Hadarim has refused to provide the necessary treatment. In another case, the prisoner Ra’id Haddad of Gaza, who is in Nafha Prison, has been complaining of severe pain in the urinary tract and colon, while the prison administration continues to put off providing him with appropriate treatment.
Extensions and the Courts Al-Ashqar disclosed that last month Israeli kangaroo courts issued orders for more than 220 administrative detentions. Some were of new prisoners; some were first-time renewals of prisoners already in administrative detention; while some detainees underwent the latest in a series of ongoing renewals of detention. Sinan Muhammad Abu Ayish, a prisoner from Nablus, had his administrative detention extended for the second time after having completed a sentence of 6 years. Administrative detention was extended for the fifth time in a row for prisoner Hashim Azmouti of Jenin. The female detainee, Siham Awad al-Haih of Hebron, had her administrative detention renewed for the second time.
He pointed out that the IOA is still holding the prisoner Subhi Abdullah Abu Lawz of the Gaza Strip, despite his having completed his sentence of 2½ years nine months ago. The reason given is that he was born in Egypt and holds Egyptian papers.
Al-Ashqar referred to the Israeli military court in Ofer, which sentenced the prisoner, Kamal Jameel Abu Shanab of Tulkarem, to three life sentences. The District Court of Beersheba sentenced the prisoner Tamer Tarasha, of the Gaza Strip, to a term of 19 years and sentenced the prisoner Musa Adam Akhleel to life in prison.
He stressed that the suffering of prisoners being held in solitary confinement continues to multiply. The IOA is holding more than 100 prisoners in isolation in different locations for long periods, as long as ten years for some prisoners. Others are facing the specter of deportation to Jordan, including two brothers, Talib and Umar ibn Awda of Tubas, who finished serving their sentences more than a year ago.
In the past month, al-Ashqar said that the prisoner Fakhri Barghouti, the second longest-held Palestinian prisoner, completed his thirty-first year in the prisons of the occupation and started on the thirty-second year. The list of prisoners who have spent more than 20 years in prison has now increased to 103 prisoners.
Escalating Actions The Director of the Information Service of the Ministry of Prisoners, Riyad al-Ashqar, stressed that during the last month the Israeli prisons authority (IPA) has stepped up punitive actions against the prisoners, especially those who have refused to wear orange uniforms. The IPA has imposed a series of punitive policies on the prisoners, including solitary confinement, the levying of heavy fines of up to 2000 shekels (about $520) per prisoner, and restrictions on clothing being brought to prisoners during visits by their families and lawyers. This is done in order to force them to wear the prison uniforms. They have also confiscated many of the prisoners’ clothes.
He added: "In a provocative step, the management of one of the Israeli prisons has undertaken an inventory of prisoners’ clothing, leaving them a certain number of garments while confiscating the rest and putting them in storage." The Continuation of Torture Contrary to Israel’s media disinformation campaign that torture is not practiced against Palestinians held in its prisons, the Israeli Public Committee against Torture, in its annual report published last month, revealed that the army and interrogators engaged in diverse types of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners immediately upon their arrest or when they are transferred to detention centers or prisons. The Committee asserted that it had documented that reality with the testimony of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners who have been subjected to torture.
Nablus / PNN – Among the approximately 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, 360 are children. Another portion is made up of women.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society confirmed today that the occupation authorities have arrested hundreds of thousands of children, women, youth and the elderly since 1967.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, 850 women have been arrested. Fifty three remain.
According to statistics of the PPS there are now 9,550 Palestinians and Arabs distributed throughout Israeli detention and interrogation centers and jails. Among them are 332 people who have spent more than 15 years in captivity. There are three Palestinians who have been imprisoned more than 30 years. Twelve people have been in for over 25 years and 106 for more than 20.
According to the Prisoner Society there are approximately 360 children in Damon, Ofar and Megiddo prisons among others. The number has increased this year. At the end of 2008 there were 338 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons but since January 190 were arrested. Many of those children were released, but not all.
Children are often not tried or charged with any crime yet they are not held in the limbo known as Administrative Detention. Those prisoners never know when of if they will be released. Their sentences are generally three or six month periods renewable by the Israeli judges, jailors or prosecutors. Some 560 Palestinians have served over four and a half years in Administrative Detention.
There are 28 Palestinians consistently in the Ramle Prison hospital, and about 1,500 waiting for treatment. And then are the legions with teeth and eye problems, chronic headaches and fatigue, digestive problems and sleep disorders.
The issue of political prisoners is major for Palestinians and is a focal point when there are negotiations with the Israelis.
"This is another funny term from Political Sciences," I told myself when I began writing this article. After all, no one of the humanly recognized sovereign entities can decide that the sun would rise on the west tomorrow. In theological terms, the only possible sovereign is God. Yet, to make this text clearer, I adopted the definitions used in Political Sciences texts and the media.
Tricky Definition
A short definition of the term says that sovereignty is the right to exercise the highest authority by the law within a specific territory. The key point is the exclusivity of jurisdiction; when a decision is made by a sovereign entity, it cannot generally be overruled by any other authority.
The current notions of state sovereignty were defined in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, and include territorial integrity, border inviolability, and supremacy of the state rather than the Church; the sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority. Another important change occurred by the end of the 18th Century, when the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Revolution of 1789 shifted the possession of sovereignty from the king to the people. However, how can such a power be recognized?
On Internal and External Sovereignty
There are two parameters that allow recognizing the existence of sovereignty: internal and external.
Internal sovereignty refers to the relations between the sovereign and its own subjects; it deals with the question: by what right does the sovereign exercise authority over its subjects? In the past, the most common answer was by divine right, nowadays a social contract (like a Constitution) is the norm.
External sovereignty concerns the relationship between sovereigns. Foreign governments recognize the sovereignty of a state over a territory and its denizens, or not. This parameter is not exact; in the near past the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China claimed sovereignty over the same territory. Different countries adopted different answers on the issue.
External Sovereignty is Secondary
This fluidity in the definition of external sovereignty shows that the internal sovereignty is more important and is – de facto – the defining quality of sovereignty. A state can exist without external sovereignty, but it would fail without internal one.
Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign possesses no territory or its territory is under occupation by another sovereign. It happened to the Holy See during the annexation of the Papal States by Italy in 1870 and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, when it was recognized as sovereign and was granted the Vatican City. After it lost Malta to Napoleon, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta rules only over two properties in Rome, but is widely recognized and even is an observer at the UN. Occupied European countries during WWII were still recognized as sovereign.
Even under these strained condition, these entities kept their sovereignty because their subjects recognized it and fought for it. If having lose the people's support during the occupation period, they would have been effectively terminated, as it did happen with many political entities during human history; under this test, the sovereignty awarded by the people had been proved as being more stable than the one relying on a king. The last disappears more easily, especially if the king and his heirs are killed in a war against other sovereign.
Thus, the key issue while testing sovereignty is its support by the people comprising it.
Acquisition of Sovereignty
In modern states – those defined by popularly invested sovereignty – the acquisition of sovereignty by the state is defined by a social contract, often based on a single document – called constitution – which is ratified by the people and later expanded into laws by a legislative body. This is the case with countries defined as democracies; the UK doesn't have a constitution but it did replace it with a legal tradition spanning many centuries.
Thus, the people are the source of all political power. Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." Thomas Jefferson – in a similar statement – said in 1799: "The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself" (both quotations from http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0300.htm).
Did the State of Israel Sign a Social Contract with Its Subjects?
On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly decided to divide Palestine between Jews and Palestinians and became the base of the external recognition of the State of Israel by other sovereign entities.
On May 15, 1948, Israel's Declaration of Independence was issued by a small group of people – lead by David Ben-Gurion – who did not get popular consent for that. The declaration was never ratified by popular vote, though it was recognized by several other states.
The new state never issued a social contract. Israel has no constitution, and thus never ratified one. That means the State of Israel never got its people's consent to be a sovereign entity – in other words, a state. The recent Base Laws legislated by the Knesset – the Israeli Parliament – are a fig leaf. The state claims they are the base for a future Constitution, but they do not cover key issues like human rights, are subject to arbitrary changes due to special needs of the coalition governments and – most important of all – were never ratified by the people. In a secondary issue, the entity doesn't have a defined territory; there are neither internal nor external resolutions awarding the Stateof Israel a well defined territory. A problem deriving from the last is: Who are the sovereign's subjects? Again, the State of Israel fails to fulfill the basic requisits to become a sovereign entity.
Is Israel Sovereign?
Under these circumstances, the external recognition of Israel is baseless; the recognition of other sovereigns – especially those defining themselves as democracies – of a non-ratified entity which has obviously not been invested by God contradicts their own social contracts and thus would not stand a serious test. The internal recognition of Israel is not an issue since it has never been ratified by its subjects.
State propaganda over the local and international media cannot change the simple fact that the State of Israel is not a sovereign entity.
WRH - And JUST in time to divert world attention from the hijacking of the Humanity, the kidnapping of a congresswoman, the blockage of the French medical mission to Gaza, the UN report on Gaza, and the Viva Palestina convoy being forced to hand carry their food and medicine into Gaza!JERUSALEM — The first rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza in more than a month landed in southern Israel on Thursday evening without hurting anyone or causing damage, the Israeli army said.
"The rocket fired from the Shujaiya district of Gaza City fell in a field near the Nahal Oz kibbutz," a military spokesman said.
It is the first time since June 13 that the army has reported a rocket being launched towards Israeli territory.
The army said more than 200 rockets and shells have been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel since the Jewish state's 22-day offensive against Hamas, Gaza's rulers, in December and January.
Operation "Cast Lead", which led to more than 1,400 Palestinian deaths including hundreds of civilians and which devastated swathes of the coastal strip, was officially aimed at ending the firing of rockets from Gaza but we see it as what it was the continued mission of Israel to wipe Palestine off the map.
1. Iman is a great Arabic word to ponder. It means "Faith" and faith is what so much of life if all about.
Faith is also a girl’s name in Arabic, just like it is in English.
I remember well back in 1994 when Iman (Faith) al-Hams was brutally murdered by the Israeli military. It was a horrible event and the Israeli response was just so awful that it deserves to be resurrected.
Below is a comment posted to the Mantiq al-Tayr site today in response to Obama’s meeting with the Jewish Lobby. The comment references in considerable detail the murder of Iman al-Hams and we here at Mantiq al-Tayr believe that the comment, posted by "Freeman", is a fitting tribute to her memory and to the memory of all the Palestinian children murdered by Israel. It is not milk for babes, so please make sure you have a tissue handy.
Here is a photograph of Faith, the 15 year old girl murdered by an Israeli soldier. The Israeli soldier who murdered her was promoted. May God have mercy on her soul.
2. Here is Freeman’s post in its entirety.
I do not really think that Obama and his guests from the 16 Jewish Organizations actually heard of the above 'incidents’ of Jewish justice in the Jewish State reported by Ha’aretz , although they may just keep a watchful eye or two on this business of investigations into possible war crimes committed by the Army of the Jewish State ('AJS’, for short, since IDF is a misnomer) during the Gaza War.
Keep a watchful eye -yes, but loose sleep over it, no. The drill for de-sticking the AJS of feven the stickiest of criminal investigations is well rehearsed . The machinery is well oiled both inside the Jewish state and internationally so that it is 'easy’ now to dive and duck and twist all 'evidence’ and eventually nothing will ever stick to the Teflon AJS.
Yet, I can safely bet that there is one name, which is connected to a distant AJS 'incident’, and which most if not all of the Jewish reps will be familiar with. I can equally bet that Obama did not hear of that name or of the incident concerning it.
It happened 15 years ago this October. Probably he was too otherwise engaged to notice it. But definitely not his guests- no matter how otherwise engaged they may have been, they know the name very well even if they were only "three years old" at the time.
I place the words "three years old" in quotation marks because they are not my own words. They are part of an infamous statement related to the incident. The complete version of the quote is engraved in my own memory and they will stay there.
The name is Iman Darweesh Al Hams, aged 13 who was shot 17 sometimes while wounded laying face down on the ground, by "Captain R" of the AJS in Rafah, Gaza, on October 15th 1994.
Captain R radioed back to his unit walking away from the body of Iman: "This is commander. Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over."
The Jewish Captain R went through no less than 2 Jewish internal investigations plus a Jewish Military Tribunal over a period of two years following the 'incident’. The Jewish verdict: Promotion to the rank of major and compensation in the amount of 83,000 shekels. It was not just full acquittal, but the Jewish Justice just had to throw in promotion and compensation, for good measure. The medal was withheld, strangely enough.
I strongly believe that the Jewish reps who met with Obama know this incident extremely well, even those of them who were still sucking Jewish milk from their moms’ Jewish nipples at the time. That was exactly the kind of incident which would rattle an American Jewish activist to the very core of his being whether he or she fully backed or was completely against Captain- well, now Major R.
"…..even if it is 3 years old……needs to be killed. Over."
This is so bad that it is even worse than the Mohammad Durrah affair, the child who was shot almost in his own father’s arms. It is bad bad bad, not necessarily because of the pathologically criminal nature of the act, but definitely because it is the sort of thing which is bad bad bad for the image of the Jewish State and the Representatives of the Jewish Organizations in America will need to spend so much time and so much effort to 'Teflon-ise’ this one off the AJS. They ALL must have had to chip in then.
I can also safely bet (if I was a betting person, which I am not) that the case of Iman Al Hams and Captain R- now Major R – of the Teflon AJS became a text book case study for the Organizations on what went 'wrong 'and how to handle it again in the future.
No no no, don’t get me wrong!!! The lesson was not how to avoid killing Palestinian Arab civilians, but rather, how to carry on killing them in LARGE numbers, equally brutally, and get away with it with no less effort than wiping off cooking oil off a Teflon pan.
It worked. More than 1300 hundred people half of whom were women and children were killed by the AJS in Gaza in just above three weeks, and not a word from Obama about it then, and not a word from him now.
To use a bit of the Manteq al-Tayr logic: if (for example) a Lebanese army officer shot a wounded Jewish Israeli girl of 13, who was running "scared to death" having blundered across some invisible line on the ground, and was already 'taken’ by a Lebanese army gun post and dropped on her face bleeding – if the Lebanese officer approached her with his soldiers, shot her at least twice in the head in order to 'verify the kill’ as a 'standard procedure’, walked away and then walked back and riddled her dead body with another dozen or so shots from his gun….
AND.. . if this Lebanese officer got promoted and received compensation after an extended multiple enquiry by the Lebanese military and by the Lebanese State…..then,
WHO in this whole wide world will appoint the Lebanese as chiefs of staff and advisers and receive the reps of the Lebanese Organizations in their country and wear the Lebanese red fez (tarboush) to show their deep affinity [Aah wallah ya a’7i MT , 3urwa wuthqa, no less!] to Lebanon?
Obama may never have heard of Iman, or of the two Ha’aretz 'incidents’ above, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he did hear of Gaza and the HUNDREDS of children who were bombed out of existence last December and January by the very same Teflon AJS- and yet he expects Palestinian Arabs to actually join him in crediting Israel for,
"…..recent steps including opening up roads and providing more access for Palestinians in the West Bank."
Waow!
Iman died almost fifteen years ago, and I never heard of her before that. As it turned out, Iman actually started living inside me, since October 5th, 2004. She never left me since then…and she will be 15, come next October.
Iman sends a message to Mr. Obama:
Iman says that if she is to follow his logic in attributing credit to the Jewish State, then Israel deserves credit for nothing less than NOT machine gunning 300 Palestinians everyday at point blanc.
THAT is truly credit worthy for Israel, Iman says.
...this video is a response to the trick repeatedly used against this channel in channel comments. It's the the standard tactic of calling someone "anti-Semitic," and its used to sabotage anyone who speaks out against the US government policy of supporting immoral and illegal Israeli policies which violate basic human rights. And as you can see, this person suggests using a new word for the same old trick. Amy Goodman interviews a former Israeli minister and she helps expose this trick used against dissidents, the defamation tactic of calling people "anti-Semitic."...
I'm working on a video about how extreme mainstream media is including the tricks used when covering of key domestic issues like health care.
But this video is a response to the trick repeatedly used against this channel in channel comments. It's the the standard tactic of calling someone "anti-Semitic," and its used to sabotage anyone who speaks out against the US government policy of supporting immoral and illegal Israeli policies which violate basic human rights. And as you can see, this person suggests using a new word for the same old trick.
Amy Goodman interviews a former Israeli minister and she helps expose this trick used against dissidents, the defamation tactic of calling people "anti-Semitic
February 13, 2002: Trench containing unexploded ordinance and human remains near Mazar-e-Sharif. (Photos: Physicians for Human Rights)
NEW YORK--"I've asked my national security team to...collect the facts," President Obama told CNN. Then, he said, "we'll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all the facts together."
Probably.
Such was Obama's tepid reaction to a New York Times cover story about an alleged "mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan."
Obama sounds so reasonable. Doesn't he always? But his reaction to the massacre in the Dasht-i-Leili desert is nothing more than the latest case of his administration refusing to investigate a Bush-era war crime.
There are two things Obama doesn't want you to know about Dasht-i-Leili. First, the political class and U.S. state-controlled media have sat on this story for six to seven years. Second, U.S. troops are accused of participating in the atrocities, which involved 12 times as many murders as My Lai.
The last major battle for northern Afghanistan took place in the city of Kunduz. After a weeks-long siege marked by treachery--at one point, the Taliban pretended to surrender, then turned their weapons on advancing Northern Alliance solders--at least 8,000 Taliban POWs fell under the control of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord with a long record of exceptional brutality.
I described what happened next in my column dated January 28, 2003:
"Five thousand of the 8,000 prisoners made the trip to Sheberghan prison in the backs of open-air Soviet-era pick-up trucks...They stopped and commandeered private container trucks to transport the other 3,000 prisoners. 'It was awful,' Irfan Azgar Ali, a survivor of the trip, told England's Guardian newspaper. 'They crammed us into sealed shipping containers. We had no water for 20 hours. We banged on the side of the container. There was no air and it was very hot. There were 300 of us in my container. By the time we arrived in Sheberghan, only ten of us were alive.'
"One Afghan trucker, forced to drive one such container, says that the prisoners began to beg for air. Northern Alliance commanders 'told us to stop the trucks, and we came down. After that, they shot into the containers [to make air holes]. Blood came pouring out. They were screaming inside.' Another driver in the convoy estimates that an average of 150 to 160 people died in each container."
According to Scottish filmmaker Jamie Doran, the butchery continued for three days.
Doran's documentary about these events, "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death," was shown in 50 countries but couldn't get a U.S. release by a media wallowing in the amped-up pseudo-patriotism that marked 2002. Doran's film broke the story.
Watch It Below
Afghanistan massacre -- the convoy of death pt. 1
Afghanistan massacre -- the convoy of death pt. 2
My column brought it to a mainstream American audience:
"When the containers were unlocked at Sheberghan," I wrote in 2003, "the bodies of the dead tumbled out. A 12-man U.S. Fifth Special Forces Group unit, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, guarded the prison's front gates...' Everything was under the control of the American commanders,' a Northern Alliance soldier tells Doran in the film. American troops searched the bodies for Al Qaeda identification cards. But, says another driver, 'Some of [the prisoners] were alive. They were shot' while 'maybe 30 or 40' American soldiers watched."
The Northern Alliance witness told Doran that American commanders advised him to "get rid of them [the bodies] before satellite pictures could be taken." Indeed, satellite photos reveal that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government dispatched bulldozers to the mass grave site in 2006 and removed most of the bodies.
World's Most Dangerous Places writer Robert Young Pelton, a colleague who (like me) was in and around Kunduz in November 2001, denies that Dostum's men or U.S. Special Forces killed more than a few hundred Taliban prisoners. However, the U.S. government started receiving firsthand accounts of the events at Dasht-i-Leili in early 2002. According to the Times "Dell Spry, the FBI's senior representative at...Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heard accounts of the deaths from agents he supervised there. Separately, 10 or so prisoners brought from Afghanistan reported that they had been 'stacked like cordwood' in shipping containers and had to lick the perspiration off one another to survive, Mr. Spry recalled."
GAZA, (PIC)-- Sigrid Kaag, the UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, has said that her organization was doing its best to rehabilitate Palestinian children in preparation for the new school year.
During an inspection tour of projects implemented by UNICEF in Gaza Strip on Thursday, she explained that those children were the mostly affected category in the latest Israeli war on Gaza.
The regional director underlined that her organization was striving hard to rid those children of the impact of the war in order to start a normal scholastic year.
UNICEF is keen on sparing children the damaging effects of war, Kaag said, adding that respecting freedom and rights of children topped her priorities.
She regretted that due to Israeli siege only quarter of Gaza Strip's needs were allowed access into the Strip.
RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, the Khatib (preacher) of the Aqsa Mosque has issued an edict prohibiting accepting an alternative homeland for Palestine and the exchange of lands.
Sheikh Sabri's edict published by Quds Press on Saturday said that a substitute homeland means surrendering the holy land of Palestine and the exchange of land is a kind of surrender, which is religiously forbidden especially regarding the land of Palestine, which is an Islamic Wakf land that could not be surrendered or bartered.
He further explained that countries could not be negotiated, exchanged or surrendered, adding that Palestine the land of Isra' is only for Muslims.
The Sheikh included verses of the holy Quran to confirm his edict, and concluded saying that no Muslim on the land of Palestine would ever accept an alternate homeland.
The recent decision by the Ramallah-based regime to close down the al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank illustrates the vulnerability and utter stupidity of the American-backed and Israeli-tolerated junta.
The decision came a day after Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddoumi appeared on al-Jazeera, accusing Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan, of complicity in poisoning the late Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat.
Justifying the decision, PA officials accused al Jazeera of bias, incitement and fostering division within the Palestinian community.
In fact, al-Jazeera didn’t go beyond transmitting Kaddumi’s impromptu news conference as other TV networks and news agencies did.
Hence, it is amply clear that the draconian measure against al Jazeera by the nominally autonomous Ramallah regime was a classical instance of shooting the messenger because one doesn’t like the message.
Non the less, the decision seems to be consistent with the overall mindset of the Ramallah regime.
This is a regime that constantly violates the basic human rights and civil liberties of the Palestinian people.
It is a regime that rounds up thousands of “non-conformist” Palestinians and incarcerates them for prolonged periods of time without charge or trial. It is a regime that nearly explicitly allows physical and psychological torture throughout its notorious jails and detention centers.
This brutal modus operandi is so rampant that many detainees would rather be in Israeli custody than being hosted in the dungeons of the “national” Palestinian Authority.
Again, it is obvious that the charges leveled against al-Jazeera are completely false simply because al-Jazeera was only carrying out its professional duties, namely reporting hard news. And if Fayyad and his colleagues in Ramallah didn’t like the news, that is not al-Jazeera’s fault.
Never the less, and given the morbid behavior of the PA regime toward free press, it is probably safe to argue that the Kaddumi affair was only a pretext for clamping down on Jazeera.
The PA, as we all know, is an inherently authoritarian regime when it comes to freedom of speech.
It unapologetically imprisons journalists, and humiliates them, for reporting “the wrong news,” interviewing the “wrong people” and working for the “wrong” newspaper, TV network or even website.
And whenever, journalists protest the assault on press freedom, they are often affronted with ignorant PA officers who argue that “we are in Palestine , not in Sweden.”
This writer has been arrested and mistreated several times by the PA for saying that which “shouldn’t be said.” Honestly, had it not been for international pressure, I probably would have remained languishing in PA jails for a long time.
Well, does a Palestinian journalist have to have “influential foreign supporters” in order to feel comfortable in his job? Unfortunately, the answer is a big “yes” for many journalists who have a zero protection against arbitrary arrest by the PA regime for not exercising self-censorship.
This is certainly true for the six journalists who are still suffering in the dungeons of the Palestinian security agencies, people such as Mustafa Sabri, who has been imprisoned for more than five months in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya .
Yes, it is self-censorship, this ugly form of suppressing press freedom which despotic regimes and police states are trying to impose on journalists and reporters. And if these often helpless creatures “don’t behave,” the slimy cell will always be awaiting them.
Notwithstanding, the enemies of press freedom shouldn’t feel triumphant because they are always on the losing end of history.
Today, with the universal proliferation of the internet, no state can even pretend to have the power to prevent the dissemination of the “wrong news.”
The recent events in Iran provided a clarion proof that the enemies of press freedom are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. Similarly, the exceptionally excellent coverage by al-Jazeera of the Nazi-like Israeli blitzkrieg in Gaza more than six months ago served to thwart efforts by the Israeli hasbara machine to turn the black into white and the big lie into a virtual truth as the Zionist mill of mendacity had been doing nearly unchallenged for decades.
There is no doubt that Israel is the greatest beneficiary from the stupid decision to close down al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank .
As we all know, the Doha-based pan-Arab network is the most watched news channel in occupied Palestine and the rest of the Arab world. It is also the first and arguably the best source of news and views on the Israeli occupation and such related subjects as Jewish settler terror against the Palestinians, land confiscation, settlement expansion and other aspects of Zionist repression and oppression of the Palestinians.
Hence, one exaggerates very little by saying that the Fayyad government, by closing down al Jazeera offices in the West Bank , is effectively helping the Israeli propaganda machine.
This explains the satisfaction with which some Zionist officials have reacted to the closure of al-Jazeera offices.
In fact, one Zionist website, the fascist-oriented Arutz Shiva, has urged the Israeli government to press the PA regime to close down all Palestinian news media, including websites, for “inciting” against the Israeli occupation and apartheid and especially for “vilifying” Nazi-like settlers seeking to steal Arab land and expelling Palestinians from Palestine .
Finally, a few words of advice to the PA regime in Ramallah:
You are behaving like a police state, and in your case, it is a police state without a state. This is certainly a bad beginning for you and for the “independent and sovereign” state you are dreaming of.
You should realize that a state-building is not carried out this way. Indeed, a state that is shaken to its foundations by a routine TV report or a newspaper article is not worth building, let alone maintaining. A bad beginning makes for a bad end.
After all, the Palestinian people didn’t struggle all these years for a police state, a sinister, mendacious regime that muzzles press freedom, closes press offices and imprisons journalists for reporting the “bad news.”
You are shooting yourself in the foot. You are fighting a loosing battle.
Palestine, (Pal Telegraph) Most DU weapons manufactured in the United States show a distinct difference between conventional weapons and those that contain DU and other toxic elements such as Tungsten etc. The warhead clearly shows the Rod with a Sabot sitting just below the point. It must be clearly understood that despite any re classification that may have taken place by the US Government these truly are nuclear related weapons.
You can clearly see that the Israel's IMI is manufacturing weapons that are almost identical to the US weapons that are displayed in the left hand picture above.
I believe that the international community should be asking the question of Israel. What is the current status of your nuclear capability?Do you manufacture such weapons yourself and what do they contain? Did you use DU weapons in Lebanon (2006) and have you used DU weapons on Gaza and continue to do so? Once you have ascertained the answers to these questions it's then a matter of asking, where did you obtain these weapons - were they imported from the US or are they your own?
Israeli manufactured weapons
It is extremely hard when carrying out such research to find the answers yourself but if one has the ability to extend your search across a broad range of sources eventually you will find what you are looking for. As an example you first identify the potential suspect munitions, find out if such weapons were exported to various locations and then try to find the manufacturers own webpage to obtain more detailed specifications. In following this painful path of investigation and linking them to military web pages such as USAF or IDF etc you can come up with some very pleasing results.
The example below not only shows the visual appearance of DU weapons but they also kindly (in some cases) tell you in the technical specifications that the munitions contains those golden words "Depleted Uranium"
M829A1 APFSDS-T and the M829A3 APFSDS-T manufactured by ATK is the most advanced in the world. It is fully compatible with 120mm smooth bore weapons on M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks and the Leopard 2 Main Battle Tanks with L44 and L55 smooth bore cannons. Both contain Material of DU
Once you are armed with such information it's now a matter of finding out its application and usage, if it was exported and to whom and then having the ability to place independent experts in the contamination zone. Those experts will then inspect bomb craters or carryout surface inspections to try and find the telltale evidence of such things as the DU Rod/Sabot. They will also obtain air filters from ambulances (who repeatedly go into the target area), take samples of fragments, subsoil's etc and then return to the Laboratory to carry on intense tests both in their own facilities and also by sending some to other well respected institutions such as Harwell in the UK etc.
Previously we have identified all the many issues associated with DU such as what are these weapons? Where and when were they used? Has evidence been recovered and tested? What are the medical/health conditions of its victims both in the military and civilian populations? I will therefore now try to explain in great detail the resultant aftermath of DU weapons and it's on going contamination.
Children of Gaza play amidst the ruins of their city but is it safe to do so?
I feel that the evidence I have provided so far reveals beyond a shadow of doubt that DU weapons have been and still are being used in all areas of conflict. It is only a matter of time before the terrible consequences of its use emerge. We will again see the troops return home from Afghanistan to their respective homes in the US, UK and other NATO countries. We will see a rise in radiation related sicknesses as we did after the Balkans, Kuwait and Iraq wars.
I ask the question will Afghanistan succumb to the terrible consequences of DU.? Will all those troops and the civilian populations in all areas of conflict end up with conditions such as cancer of the Thyroid, cancer of the Lymph Glands, Leukaemia, diabetes or become sterile? Will this contamination pass down through their reproductive organs and create more still births or badly disfigured children and will those same children pass it on to their siblings? Generally speaking the answer is yes.
We as an international community must address all of these issues and continue to lobby our respective heads of government and politicians to finally take action and stop the manufacturing and use of Depleted Uranium. It is our duty of care to stop this evil act against mankind and where applicable bring those responsible to trial. We are not just talking about thousands upon thousands of people but possibly millions and in that context the current war crimes investigations are purely a drop in the ocean!
Now lets look at the dangers of DU weaponry and its associated contamination both regionally and around the world: We are told by the many governments, especially those belonging to NATO (that use DU), that low level radiation is safe or as they tend to say "as safe as normal background radiation we encounter on a daily basis".
The National Academy of Sciences in their BEIR VII report, regarding low level radiation, stated that there "is no safe level of exposure". The report also finally admitted that very low levels of radiation are more harmful per unit of radiation than higher levels of exposure; also know as the suppralinear effect.
Leuren Moret is an international radiation specialist, with a B.S. degree in geology from University of California at Davis, a M.A. degree in Near Eastern studies from University of California at Berkeley and has done post-graduate work in the geosciences at UC-Davis.
Leuren Moret has worked around the world on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other official's .Leuren is an international expert on depleted uranium. She has worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 she became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. As she once quoted "Depleted Uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff"
Leuren stated that since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years. Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302. The US has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and two times in Iraq since 1991. Calling DU conventional weapons is entirely false when in fact they are nuclear weapons. DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: It is a heavy metal chemical poison, a radioactive poison and has a particulate effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 microns and smaller.
DU has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA
Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless. In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases. In order to provide more evidence as to the grave dangers of Depleted Uranium we have to turn to some other independent experts who have actively participated in on site testing and the submission of their findings.
Dr Rosalie Bertell, Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart, received her Ph. D. degree in Biometrics with minors in Biology and Biochemistry from the Catholic University of America, in 1966. Since that time she has worked as a biometrician and environmental epidemiologist. By choice, Dr. Bertell works for the victims or potential victims of industrial, technological and military pollution. Among many projects she has headed, the most notable are: Director of the International Medical Commission Bhopal which investigated the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster in India, and organizer of the International Medical Commission Chernobyl to present testimony to the Permanent People's Tribunal. She assisted the people of the Philippines with problems stemming from toxic waste left by the U.S. Military on their abandoned Subic and Clark military bases. She has worked with the government of Ireland to hold Britain responsible for the radioactive pollution of the Irish Sea, and is assisting the Gulf War Veterans and the Iraqi citizens dealing with the illness called Gulf War Syndrome. She acted as Consultant to local, Provincial and Federal Governments, unions and citizen organizations.
As we have previously pointed out the current usage of the ICRP model is not only outdated but also unsuitable in the analysis of low level radiation. Dr Bertell listed the following: The Ministry appears to have depended heavily on the opinions of the ICRP, WHO (which usually quotes ICRP), CNSC (which depends totally on ICRP) and the ATSDR (which is partly independent).
One can only assume that if this is the case then all those currently responsible for producing reports in relation to DU contamination are providing totally inaccurate reports. When one reflects on the reports that came out of the Balkans, Iraq and Lebanon it is clear that serious evidence was not analysed correctly resulting in deeply flawed and inaccurate statements. It is painfully clear that this also extended into the UDEP and many other government and military agencies. Most of the above authorities state that although there may be some concerns in relation to the use of Depleted Uranium "the low level radiation is not considered harmful any more than normal background radiation.
Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi Assoc. Prof. / Mamoun Univ. for Science & Technology gave an overview on Depleted Uranium Contamination in Iraq.
He put the following into his report that revealed a distinct cover-up by the United States and the Pentagon. Revelation of information regarding what is called the Gulf War Syndrome among exposed American veterans helped Iraqi researchers and Medical Doctors to understand the nature of the effect of these weapons, and the means required to investigate further into this issue.
He went on to say that the synergetic impact on health due to the post Gulf War I economical sanctions and DU related radioactive contamination raised the number of casualties in contaminated areas as in southern Iraq. Continual usage of DU after Gulf War I on other Iraqi territories through the illegal No-Fly Zones and the major DU loaded Cruise Missiles attack of year 1998, all contributed in making the problem increasingly complex.
During 2003, military operations conducted in Iraq by the invading forces used additional rounds of DU in heavily populated areas such as Baghdad, Samawa and other provinces. It is only fair to conclude that the environment in Iraq and its population have been exposed continuously to DU weaponry or its contaminating remains, since 1991. Accordingly millions of Iraqi's have received higher doses of radioactivity than ordinary background levels. As a result a multi-fold increase of low level radiation exposure related diseases have been registered since 1995. An increase of children's leukaemia, congenital malformations, breast cancer etc...
The Doctor certainly hit the nail on the head when he stated the shift of leukaemia incidence rates towards younger children during the recent years, and its association with geographically distributed contaminated areas, offers strong evidence of the correlation between LLR exposure and resulted health damages. Through this paper, an overview of major scientific DU conclusions will be presented, drawn from investigations and research conducted since the year 1991 by Iraqi researchers and MDs. Schemes of these researches can be classified into three categories: 1. DU contamination detection and exploration programs. 2. DU effects on human body cells. 3. DU related epidemiological studies.
He further stated that the American and British occupation forces are totally responsible for: 1- Forbidding any release of statistics related to civilian casualties after the occupation [8]. 2- Refusal to clean up contaminated areas [9]. 3- Depriving international agencies and Iraqi researchers the right to conduct full (DU) related exploration programs by USA occupation forces [2] to prevent further damages is the best evidence that these forces are covering up their certain conclusive evidence of the harmful health impacts of DU.
Dr Chris Busby PhD is an expert based in the UK who has over a long period of time attempted to bring the hidden truth out into the open and with the help of his associate Dai Williams have and continue to play a major role in revealing the real issues that are behind Depleted Uranium and the effects of Low Level Radiation (LLR). He participated in the International DU Conference in Hamburg (2003) and wrote the following:
Why is there concern about the health effects of Depleted Uranium? Would there be equivalent argument about the health effects following the use of Tungsten in tank shells or lead in bullets? The answer is straightforward: everybody knows that Uranium is radioactive and everyone knows that radiation exposure leads to cancer, leukaemia and genetic damage. No one wants to be exposed to ionising radiation. So why is such a weapon being used, if this is the case?
He went of to say the answer is tied to a much larger and more serious issue. This is the issue of the health consequences of exposure to low doses of radiation from nuclear pollution of the planet, a subject which I have studied for more than fourteen years. The reason that DU is employed is that the weapons are astoundingly successful and have revolutionised warfare.
Depleted Uranium at work and the after effects of contamination
Its use represents a route for the nuclear industry to rid itself of a waste product which would otherwise be expensive to dispose of. But the downside is that the material clearly represents a radiation hazard which is indiscriminate: battlefields are going to be contaminated and civilian populations are going to be exposed. There is an up-side and a down-side. The war will be won but the method will be illegal within contemporary accepted moral arguments. Human rights will be infringed by a randomly dispersed and thus indiscriminate radioactive weapon of mass destruction.
His brief also gave some technical aspects of the situation which I am putting in this report in order for those who wish to be educated can do so.
Let us try to fit the dispersion of Depleted Uranium into this perspective.
In terms of disintegrating atoms, radioactivity is measured in Bequerels. One Becquerel represents one disintegration per second. This is a reasonable way of quantifying amounts of radioactivity. The average Natural Uranium content of soil is about 10-20 Becquerel's per kilogram, including all the Uranium isotopes. Most people excrete as much as 0.1mBq (0.0001Bq) per litre of Urine as a result of absorption of natural Uranium in food they eat. Pure Depleted Uranium contains about 12,400,000Bq of U- 238 per kilogram and in Kosovo, some soil samples analysed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) contained 250,000Bq/kg (UNEP 2001, Annex). The 350 tonnes of DU used in the first Gulf War represents 4.3 TBq (4.3 x 1012 Bq) of Uranium alpha activity (13.0 x 1012 if the radioactive beta emitting daughter isotopes are included). If Dai Williams (2003) is correct that about 1700 tonnes was used in the latest war, then that represents 63 TBq of activity dispersed mainly into a populated area of perhaps 100km2 . This gives a mean density of deposition of radioactivity of 630,000Bq/m2.
Dr Bushby stated that the truth about the health effects of low level radiation has been covered up by the nuclear /military lobby in many ways for about 50 years. I wrote about this in Wings of Death (Busby 1995) and there I explained how different levels of control and bias had been employed to keep the public from realising that they were being systematically poisoned by radioactivity. I could continue with so much more interesting work carried out by this dedicated man but space does not allow.
Finally I would like to add some information from his associate Dai Williams who has spent much time out in the fields of battle taking samples and making such reports possible:
The first evidence that the IDF were using uranium was a picture from the Getty picture library that showed a uranium shell being carried by an Israeli soldier.
Shortly after the war stopped on 17th of August, a report in the Lebanese ‘Daily Star' newspaper drew attention to some radiation readings made by a Lebanese scientist in a bomb crater in Khiam in South Lebanon. The scientist, Dr Khobeisi, measured a gamma exposure reading of 700nSv/h in the crater and 300nSv/h at the edge; the background for the area was 30nSv/h. something was there: but what? Dai Williams, an independent researcher from Surrey, went to Lebanon on 17th of September on behalf of Green Audit to find out and bring back samples from the Khiam crater and other sites.
The soil samples were examined in Aberystwyth using a beta scintillation counter and also alpha registering CR39 plastic. It was clear that the Khiam sample was more radioactive than background soil samples from the area. Dai Williams also brought back a vehicle air filter from an ambulance. Two soil samples and the filter were sent to the Harwell labs in Oxfordshire. The results were astonishing. They confirmed the presence of a radioactive material, but the material was enriched Uranium with an isotopic ratio of 108. This was in the soil sample from Khiam and also in the ambulance filter. The Khiam soil sample also contained quite a lot of Uranium - about 180Bq/kg (normal soil in the area would have less than 20Bq/kg).
The question is why use enriched Uranium? It is a bit like shooting your enemy with diamonds. There were only two possible explanations. The first is that it is a smokescreen for a more widespread use of depleted Uranium; the final contamination when all gets mixed up after the war has a natural isotopic signature. The second idea is that this is some new type of weapon altogether, one that needs enriched Uranium to work. One Italian physicist has suggested a fusion bomb using deuterium and enriched uranium to produce neutrons which kill living systems but do not destroy property. Others have suggested a thermobaric device in which the uranium powder has to have particular burn properties, conferred by the radioactivity of the enrichment.
Whatever the explanation, the airbrush came rapidly out. The following week Steve Connor, the science writer for the Independent, wrote a small dismissive article in which Chris Busby was demoted from Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk to a Green Party Activist and the existence of Uranium in Lebanon was denied.
The war stopped because the UN peace keepers were to go in and police southern Lebanon. If there was Uranium there, then the UN troops would be rather unhappy about serving, since they had already been stung in Kosovo where Spanish, Italian and Portuguese troops had suffered leukaemia and lymphoma from DU exposures. Sensing a cover-up involving UNEP and Lebanese authorities, Dai Williams decided to go back and get more samples.
These were examined by Chris Busby in Aberystwyth and the ones with increased radiation signatures sent to Harwell. Results showed the presence of enriched Uranium in the water samples from two separate craters in Khiam and showed a significant amount of Uranium in one of the soil samples. At this point the analysis had to stop since everyone had run out of money.
To summarise I feel that we all have failed in allowing this evil act against the whole of mankind to continue after a period of some 20 years and still continues in the battlefields of Afghanistan and maybe now possibly Pakistan. We continued to see its usage in Lebanon and Gaza and now we wait for the resultant rise in cancer related illnesses. We have seen all the many authorities fail in their duty of care and their ability to see the bigger picture. We have clearly revealed that major cover-ups occurred on a massive scale and we owe it to those war vets and innocent civilians to stop the manufacturing of DU and at the same time ban the use of these weapons pending an inquiry. We see major INGO's debating the many issues and in general pussyfooting around. This has to stop now and someone has to thump the table and demand action. We have to give those that suffer their day in court and to bring to trial those that knowingly promoted its usage against innocent people and the Geneva Convention.
We have reached a stage that many high tech weaponry can be delivered automatically with little effort, especially in the development of the drones that can also carry missiles. War has now become a comparison to a computer game where the operator sits many miles away spying on residents below. With the flick of a button he can zoom in and almost read your newspaper. He can then mark you with a laser in readiness for the final act of dispatching the missile. With the latest missiles and bombs they can be launched from an aircraft, helicopter or drone many miles away from the location. With the assistance of such an operator or another airborne aircraft the missile or bomb is then released and guided onto the marked target.
Again I repeat - The only way this is going to stop is by the actions of ordinary simple people. You have to stop sitting on your hands and start lobbying or forming groups. We have all seen the effects that large crowds have on governments, especially as in the case of the Gaza conflict. We know that many UN members' states are against DU and we know that the same story is repeated across the EU. Gaza is a very small enclave with a densely populated city. Its people have suffered severely by this disproportional attack. The least the international community can do for them is make this the last example of weaponry abuse and bring the offenders to justice.
Germany stop kissing up to Israel already, if you want to make up for the natzi ways you had towards jews then help the palestinians and fight the zionist natzi state of Israel. Dear Germany Get a @#$%ing life, already!
How 'Nazi gnome' making Heil Hitler salute could get artist jailed
This 14-inch gnome has created a stir after artist Ottmar Hoerl created him giving a Nazi salute
At just 14in, few would think a tiny gnome would offend anyone.
Unfortunately for this model, he has been made giving a stiff-armed Hitler salute - which breaks Germany's strict laws against the use of Nazi symbols.
The gnome is one of 700 made by German artist Ottmar Hoerl which have been displayed in Belgium and Italy.
But Hoerl has landed himself in hot water after a member of the public made a complaint to police about the works.
Now German prosecutors in Nuremberg have launched an investigation into whether the artist's gold-coloured gnome violates the law.
Giving the outlawed Hitler salute or using Nazi symbols is a crime in Germany punishable by up to three years in prison.
Prosecutor spokesman Wolfgang Traeg said police have asked the artist and gallery what the intention of the work was.
'It's not a crime if it can be proved that the artist was being critical of the Nazis,' he said.
But Hoerl, who also created the giant blue and yellow euro symbol that was erected in front of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt in 2001, said he couldn't believe the fuss the works have caused.
'I'd have been executed by the Nazis if I had portrayed the super race as gnomes in 1942,' said.
The golden gnome, with an impish grin, was originally one of 700 used in a 2008 exhibition called Dance With The Devil in the Belgium city of Ghent.
The German prosecution service is investigating whether the artwork breaks the country's strict laws against the use of Nazi symbols
The gnomes were also displayed without objection in Bolzano, Italy and Aschaffenburg, Germany.
'In Belgium everyone understood what was meant,' Hoerl said after inscribing the word poisoned on the gnome's base.
The gnomes are for sale £43 each - and about 400 of the 700 originals still in the collection are currently on display in Aschaffenburg.
Hoerl has a penchant for gnomes. In 2006 he produced 1,200 gnomes in the colours of Germany's national flag - black, red and gold - for an exhibition in Karlsruhe.
Gnomes originate in Germany from the late 19th century and feature in many German fairy tales, both as a force for good and evil.
The war is over. The Nazis lost. It all happened in the first half of the previous century.
And we have problems right here and right now that need to be dealt with.
Kindly join us in the 21st Century.
Germany opens 'Nazi' gnome case
The artist says his gnomes ridicule, rather than glorify, the Nazis
A garden gnome giving the Nazi salute has landed a German artist in trouble with the authorities in Nuremberg.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the gnome, which went on show in one of the city's galleries, breaks the strict law banning Nazi symbols and gestures.
The Bavarian city is particularly sensitive about the Nazi era because Adolf Hitler used it for big rallies and leading Nazis went on trial there.
The artist, Ottmar Hoerl, says his gnomes poke fun at the Nazis.
"I'm astonished that a single garden gnome, in what is for me an obscure gallery in Nuremberg, has unleashed such a public discussion because of an anonymous denunciation by someone," Mr Hoerl said.
The 59-year-old artist has been president of Nuremberg's Academy of Fine Arts since 2005.
"I didn't put it in the art gallery. Someone must have bought it and put it there. But I don't know what all the fuss is about.
"With my gnomes I'm highlighting the danger of political opportunism and right-wing ideology. I get the feeling that this gnome has reopened an old wound," he said.
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US manufactured weapons 
Cartridge Height . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984mm
M829A3MM829A3M MMPHYSICAL DATA
Shortly after the war stopped on 17th of August, a report in the Lebanese ‘Daily Star' newspaper drew attention to some radiation readings made by a Lebanese scientist in a bomb crater in Khiam in South Lebanon. The scientist, Dr Khobeisi, measured a gamma exposure reading of 700nSv/h in the crater and 300nSv/h at the edge; the background for the area was 30nSv/h. something was there: but what? Dai Williams, an independent researcher from Surrey, went to Lebanon on 17th of September on behalf of Green Audit to find out and bring back samples from the Khiam crater and other sites.
Memo to President Obama: what did I tell you, Mr. President?!?
Netanyahu has decided that his response to the request to halt this settlement is going to be to spit in your face, and tell you it's raining.
Of course, no matter how intently you're spat upon, you'll never stop sending those checks to Israel, right?!?
No matter how deeply Israel is publicly humiliating you and your administration, you'll just keep on sending those checks, and continuing to validate bad behavior on the part of the Israeli administration, right?!?
And what is wrong with this picture, Mr. President?!?
Everything.