Preparing for the 28th Anniversary of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila

Franklin P. Lamb

Hello Dearest Maisoon,
I certainly understand and share your sadness and feeling of hopelessness after your visit to Shatila Camp. Most people i take there leave feeling much the same as you.
In the Palestinian Refugee camps in Lebanon tomorrow begins the 'black month' during which the World commemorates the September 1982 massacre at Sabra-Shatila—this year being of course the 28th anniversary but for many its like the carnage happened last year.
Perhaps the commemoration will be a bit more somber than usual this year given the realization that the same mentality, indeed some of the same people, who committed, condoned and granted themselves amnesty for the massacre three decades ago were the most adamant last month in insisting on denying Palestinian refugees the most elementary civil rights. The Phalange,( Kataib--Lebanese Forces) Saad Haddad militia, and their Israeli allies for example—who were of course guilty in 1982 but all in Parliament, as with all of us inside and outside of Lebanon, are responsible for what happened between Sept. 16-18th in 1982 and what didn’t happen on August 17, 2010 with respect to civil rights for the massacre survivors.
As some of the thousands indelibly marked by that carnage 28 years ago, and as is our custom and duty, we at the Sabra Shatila Foundation will submit a brief essay in a couple of weeks to remind readers and pay our respects to the dead.
But not without some field research for this years article, some of which we conducted in today's heat and humidity.
This years article will discuss 12 year old Munir Mohammad’s miraculous survival at one of Shatila’s 15 “Walls of Death”, being the number of 'Walls of Death" the SSF has documented inside Shatila camp. These walls were used during the 43 hours of the slaughter arranged, observed, condoned, and attempted to be covered up by the enemies of humanity and Palestine.
Hopefully we will contribute a little bit to the historical record of one of the darkest periods of the 20th Century. There are so many victims families, and indeed some perpetrators, still able and willing to shed light for interested researchers. An important project if you know of interested available researchers who want to come and work on it becuase 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila, accountability, justice and civil rights are too long delayed and denied.
This noon, map, notes and photographs from the 1982 carnage in hand, we worked on documenting the location of the 15 ‘Walls of Death’ repeatedly used by the killers between Thursday September 16, 1982 beginning around 6 p.m. until Saturday September 18, 1982 at 1 p.m. It was at these locations that camp inhabitants were pulled, dragged and herded from shelters and homes to be butchered against walls in the alleys of Shatila.
The photos below show some of today’s work locating ( only the old people appear to know the precise locations) where Palestinian women and children were quickly found ( with the aid of information provided by Israeli operatives to the killers on Wednesday September 15, 1982, the former having surveyed Shatila Camp asking the kids and women, as the strangers pretended they had come from NGO’s and wanted to help the camp residents, by documenting their locations. But their real work was to identify the location of the shelters for the killers scheduled to be ushered into the camps the next day. When the butchers began their work, those quickly located in the shelters were all slaughtered fast…with a very few survivors like Munir, who had hidden with with mother and brothers and sisters underground inside “Abu Yassirs” Shelter in the Horst Tabet area opposite Akka Hospital. The women and children were raped and slaughtered, more than a dozen unborn slashed from their mothers’ wombs, and dismembered and any men found were lined up against these walls, arms raised, and shot in the back. Hundreds of bodies were recovered near or along these “walls of death”. The walls remain after 28 years with bullet scares and holes still visible although some efforts have been made to feather them over with cement mortar and plaster. This area of Shatila as you may notice from the Amal logos on some of the walls was taken over from Palestinians by Lebanese following the Amal “camp wars” in 1986-88. These Lebanese Arab Muslim attacks on Shatila killed more than the 1982 Christian/Israeli Massacre. The attacks on the camps that forced some residents to eat cats and dogs, and reports of cannibalism to survive, was done at Syria’s instruction to prevent Arafat from regaining a power base in the Beirut camps of Shatila and Burj al Barajneh.
My young companions shown in these photos, all of whom live in hovels inside the “walls of death” use them for games, unaware, of course, that some of their relatives were butchered there.
The lady shown to my left in photo # 9030 was spraying for insects. She says the neighborhood can still smell the death that happened outside her door nearly
Will send you a copy of “Munirs Story” when we finish it.
Very best wishes to you and please try not to get too discouraged, i know its hard these days.
franklin
Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon
PLEASE SIGN HERE!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html
“Failure is not an option for the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, our only choice is success”
15 year old Hiba Hajj, PCRC volunteer, Ein el Helwe Palestinian Camp, Saida, Lebanon
Please check our website for UPDATES:
www.palestinecivilrightscampaign.org
Franklin P. Lamb, LLM,PhD
Director, Americans Concerned for
Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut
Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org
--
Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon
PLEASE SIGN HERE!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html
“Failure is not an option for the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, our only choice is success”
15 year old Hiba Hajj, PCRC volunteer, Ein el Helwe Palestinian Camp, Saida, Lebanon
Please check our website for UPDATES:
www.palestinecivilrightscampaign.org

The People's Voice

Palestine Betrayed by Efraim Karsh

Review by Jim Miles

Palestine Betrayed. Efraim Karsh. Yale University Press, London, 2010.

Was Palestine betrayed? Of course it was, by the British, the United States, France, the League of Nations, the United Nations, the remnants of the Ottoman empire, all of the regional Arab countries, and by certain elites and powerful of Palestine itself. Efraim Karsh makes the latter two the main if not the sole responsible for the nakba - the disaster - that occurred in 1947-48 with the announced partition of Palestine followed by the declaration of the state of Israel. “Palestine Betrayed,” as portrayed by Karsh, is the story of the connivances of the Arab leaders in the region along with the elites of Palestine while the Jewish population continually offered peace and coexistence with their brethren and encouraged them to stay in their villages and towns to become partners in the new state enterprise.

Karsh is both right…

Karsh is right in that, yes, the Palestinians were in essence betrayed by the Arab leaders at the time more concerned about their own scenarios and power bases than that of a nascent Palestinian nationality. Further he is correct in that some of the local Palestinian leadership - or what remained of it after the British military violently dealt with them in the previous ‘Arab revolt’ - told the people of the towns and villages to evacuate and retreat away from the advancing Jewish forces. He presents many quotes from Jewish leaders, Ben Gurion in particular, that attempt to show that the Jewish people wished to live in peaceful coexistence with their Arab neighbours.

…and horribly wrong.

His approach and methodology of trying to reconstruct the arguments around the nakba are horribly wrong in several ways.
In the introduction he writes, “It is understandable for leaders and politicians, culpable for their nation’s greatest ever disaster, to revert to hyperbole and lies in their quest for personal and collective exoneration, it is inexcusable for future generations of scholars and intellectuals to substitute propaganda for incontrovertible facts.” In other words, “These politicized historians have turned the saga of Israel’s birth upside down, with the aggressors transformed in hapless victims and vice versa.”
His main historical criticism is directed at the “new historians” - who have “total unfamiliarity…with the Arab world…and their condescending treatment of the Palestinians as passive objects.” He says that, “rather than unearth new facts or offer novel interpretations”, they have “recycled the standard Palestinian Arab narrative of the conflict.” Karsh then continues to announce that “the recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writer and ignored or distorted by the “new historians.”
The result is that the new documents reveal “that there was nothing inevitable about the Palestinian-Jewish confrontation….that the claim of premeditated dispossession is not only baseless but the inverse of the truth,” and that it was the Arab leaders “against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival.”
“It is to reclaim this historical truth that this book has been written.” Karsh succeeds, and he fails.
If the reader is unfamiliar with any other writings on Israel, the “new historians” that Karsh so disparages (and to the uninitiated, the new historians are predominantly if not solely Israeli academics), and if the reader is unfamiliar with the larger historical contexts of the world’s empires during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century and their impacts within the Middle East, the reclamation of historical truth works. That is, it does present a picture of a peaceful Jewish population betrayed by a greedy, backwards, ineffective, and self-serving Arab leadership.
Deconstructing Palestine
Unfortunately there are several problems with this presentation. The first is that while Karsh casually dismisses the new historians, he does nothing to deconstruct their arguments. And while he attempts to present the situation as a new revelation that the “new historians” have ignored, he is fully wrong. Karsh cherry picks his arguments (looks for quotes that support only his idea) without making any attempt to contradict or counter the arguments of the new historians, with no demonstration of where their arguments are wrong.
Much more revealing for anyone who has read the “new historians” is that they agree with Karsh - the Palestinians were betrayed by their own kind - and several of them spend a fair amount of time criticizing the actions of the leaders of the Arab nations struggling for their own position and power in a world still largely controlled by old empires. But that is only one side of the coin, and where Karsh goes wrong is not representing the overall aim of the original Zionist enterprise and its ongoing belief and attitude towards its domination and control over a “land without people for a people without land.”
Demographics - as always.
Population demographics is another theme where Karsh goes wrong. He has many chosen quotes about how peaceful and trusting the Jewish people were and that they wished the Palestinians to work with them in their new state. The error is that of demographics: this wish for peaceful coexistence was always expressed with the accent on the Jewish people having the majority of the population. By distorting this item, and then ignoring the many statements about the plans for ethnic cleansing via population transfer, expulsion, and/or outright killing of the local inhabitants, Karsh denies support to his argument that “premeditated dispossession is baseless.” From its inception, to the current reality of the ongoing settlements, demolitions, expulsions, and biased civil and military laws, and possible future population transfer during some large military event (created for that purpose, as one could imagine with Iran), the idea of dispossessing the Palestinians cannot be denied.
An imagined reality
There, I stepped into the boundary I do not like to cross, that of conjecture. But that introduces another failing of Karsh’s arguments, that of using conjectural material as if it is valid factual support for his presentation, especially fictional material about a supposed happy future as compared to historical fiction that incorporates the actual events of history. He quotes the Zionist novel “Alteneuland” (1923) by Herzl as if the imaginary speaker’s voice represents the reality of the Palestinian people. In an academic argument that is simply baseless and false, a reversion “to hyperbole and lies in their quest for personal and collective exoneration.”
It continues in other arguments, where Karsh describes a besieged kibbutz and how it fought to the last man, followed illogically - at least for an academic argument and not one based on politicizing the saga of Israel’s birth - by the comment “True or not….” Well, is it, or is it not? By the manner in which it is presented I would have to guess not, but it apparently does serve as “a symbol of heroism” for the “Israeli collective memory.” A true ‘false flag’ operation.
Military dominance
Another theme that is constantly reiterated throughout the work is the “massive” amounts of armaments that the Arab Palestinian population received contrasted with the isolated, over-whelmed, and poorly armed Jewish citizens. Alongside that, the Haganah is mentioned a few times but never described as to its overall purpose or power, nor are the other Jewish paramilitaries (Irgun and Stern gangs) and their effects and power presented.
Karsh never does put a number on the “massive” amounts of armaments although elsewhere in the work he seems quite capable of finding historical records that put very precise numbers on items for discussion be it economics, land sales, food distribution, or the inevitable figure of discussion, the refugee populations and the villages from where they originated. In contrast, the “new historians” are quite capable of finding references to armaments obtained by smuggling in European arms, and their relatively high sophistication compared to the arms of the Palestinians.
Similarly with the Jewish paramilitaries, the “new historians” present much documented material concerning the role of these militaries, their training during the Second World War with the British command, and their superiority in numbers compared to the number of Arab fighters in Palestine, before or during the 1948 war. Karsh seems to be able to find all sorts of numbers by town and village for the Arab fighters, but provides little of anything for the Jewish forces, nor does he mention their training and overall superiority in numbers.
Deir Yassin - a unique tragedy.
Karsh deals with the displacement and expulsion of the Palestinians dismissively. Except for the one exception of Deir Yasin, a “tragedy” or at worst a “carnage”, all the villages and towns of Palestine as well as the cities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Jerusalem were vacated on the orders and recommendations of the existing Arab authorities. He complains that Dier Yasin “would become the most effective Arab propaganda tool against Israel….the widely exaggerated descriptions of Jewish atrocities, especially of alleged rapes of women that never took place, spread panic across Palestinian society and intensified the ongoing mass flight.”
Well, again, true and not true. It certainly became the “most” effective propaganda tool against Israeli military occupation, and yes it did spread panic, as that is the intent of any military action on a populace. However it is not the only incident of massacres of civilians, nor does it allow that over 450 Palestinian villages were immediately destroyed in order to prevent the return of the refugees, who under international law have the right of return.
Beit Daras - a reality
Any incidence of massacres or forced evictions and destruction of villages of towns would obviously be downplayed in any Haganah/Israeli records. The language of the victors would certainly minimize anything that might incriminate themselves and thus the reports would indicate only that the residents fled on their own initiative, at the urging of their own leaders, in spite of Haganah’s supposed efforts to retain the population in the villages.
Beit Daras was situated 46 kilometers north east of Gaza city, with no real claim to fame other than that of a long standing local village that survived many series of invading armies passing over and around its location. However, shortly after 1917, the British built a police station east of the village which served to “ensure the safety of a Jewish colony known as Tabiyya.” While the record supports Karsh’s contention that the Jews and the Palestinians coexisted peacefully, there was till an underlying tension, in particular from the British patrols into Beit Daras. In contradiction to Karsh’s contention however, is the knowledge within the Palestinian population that the “Jewish immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not the typical seekers of religious salvation and escapees of oppression. They were part of a Zionist program to conquer Palestine, all of it, and eject its people.”
From there the reality became that of another massacre of civilians by Jewish forces, unrecorded in the history books but well represented in the personal lives of those who lived there and survived as refugees retaining the eternal hope of their right of return.[1] Beit Daras was part of the plan in the region to deny Palestinian base operations, create panic and break morale in order to cause the exodus of the inhabitants.
On May 21, 1948 the village was surrounded by Jewish forces. News of the Deir Yasin massacre had reached the village and the women and children were encouraged to leave. When the fleeing families reached the outskirts of the village “they were faced with indiscriminate Zionist shelling no less ugly than that of Deir Yassin…265 victims fell on that day, mostly, children, elders, and women.” Another witness recorded that “The Jews let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns.”
I would wonder what the Haganah record shows for the fight for Beit Daras, and how many other Beit Daras’ and Deir Yasin’s there are that would simply be recorded as ‘villagers fled…men of fighting age detained’.
..and more….
Another massacre occurred within recorded history at Tantura, a village on the Tel Aviv/Jaffa coastline. Attacked from four sides, the captives “were moved to the beach. There the men were separated from the women and children….Two hundred men between the ages of thirteen and thirty were massacred by the Alexandroni and other Jewish forces.” Another incident of the not unusual scenario where military actions go against international and humanitarian laws, both for civilians and military prisoners.[2]
Certainly two massacres would have been enough to cause widespread panic and fear as an inducement to flee the villages. Yet another “new historian”, Benny Morris (who has more recently rescinded his earlier ideas and become a recidivist historian - yet whose research cannot be denied) reported “a far more plausible reason for the Palestinian flight: a systematic Israeli policy of massacres in Palestinian towns and villages, at least 24 according to his most recent, conservative estimates; the rape of women and girls by Israeli soldiers; and arbitrary killings.” Further:
…in the country’s northern Palestinian heartland there was an unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion. That can’t be chance….various officers …understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads…Ben-Gurion [see below] silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.” [3]
Karsh argues that there was no plan to systematically ethnically cleanse Palestine, yet it is known that the idea is an underlying theme of Zionist thought from its inception. And truthfully, again, there was no “systematic plan,” just the underlying motive combined with whatever local situation evaluation the field commander found themselves dealing with while operating under a general plan to gain land and more land with as few Palestinians as possible.
Unfortunately for Karsh, the record of anecdotal histories of the massacres, killings, expulsion and destruction of villages immediately after the expulsions - while it does not deny the wish to live peacefully alongside the Jewish people - does not support his thesis that the Jewish leaders and military were at all accommodating to the Palestinian people. Nor does it support his argument that the Palestinians initiated all the fighting and that the supposedly under-armed, under-manned Jewish forces prevailed over enormous obstacles.
Ben-Gurion and “Jewish coexistence”
Ben-Gurion is frequently quoted along the theme of desiring the Arabs to remain in place and live peacefully in coexistence with the Jewish population. As mentioned previously, that was generally within the context of the main Zionist fear of demographic dominance by the Arab population. In his conversations with political leaders from the Arab countries around the region, his tone was always one of restraint and egalitarian purpose, accepting that the Arab population remain in place. Similarly with the local Palestinian leaders, his rhetoric as quoted was all about coexistence with the Arabs participating in the wonderful modernity of the Jewish people.
Any reader who follows politics should know that the rhetoric provided by political leaders has many purposes: to hide, conceal, manipulate, placate, dissimulate, and on. The rhetoric differs in tones of condescension depending on whether the target is considered to be in a superior position in consideration of the aid that could be provided, or whether the target is considered inferior and, as in this case, backwards, uncivilized, and potentially hostile to one’s real intentions. Ben-Gurion spoke well, disarming his European critics, placating the antagonistic but manipulable Arab neighbours, yet ultimately saying nothing to the everyday Palestinian working and living in the villages and towns of the area he wished to control - other than what was spoken by the deeds of the Jewish militaries.
Ben-Gurion was no saviour offering freedom and democracy, which is really above and beyond coexistence, as evidenced by informative quotes that Karsh simply decided to ignore. Ben-Gurion “clarified in his diary that settlement and, when circumstances would allow it, the transfer of the indigenous population would ensure the realization of the Zionist dream….For Ben-Gurion, land was everything.” [4] Early in 1948, he indicated, “If we receive in time the arms we have already purchased…we will be able not only to defend but also to inflict death blows on the Syrians in their own country - and take over Palestine as a whole….This is not a mystical belief but a cold and rational calculation based on practical examination.”
Earlier, in 1937, before the holocaust added its impetus to the desire for Palestine, Ben-Gurion “demonstrated a clear stand: it was better that the smallest possible number of Arabs remain with the area of the state.” In 1947, before the UN General Assembly Resolution was adopted, Ben-Gurion spoke to the Executive of the Jewish Agency indicating “in the clearest possible terms that ethnic cleansing formed the alternative or complementary means of ensuring that the new state would be an exclusively Jewish one. The Palestinians inside the Jewish state…could become a fifth column, and if so ‘they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them.”[5]
And finally on Ben-Gurion exclusively, he stated in a closed forum meeting, “With compulsory transfer we have a vast area [for settlement]...I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” [6] Other than perhaps it is against international law, against the will of the people, against common sense, and the means to the end is by way of massacres and demolitions, certainly gives another meaning to Ben-Gurion’s sense of morality, the Jewish overlord ridding himself of the pestilent, backward, and uncivilized and uncultured Palestinians. How neighbourly, how democratic. These are not statements extolling the virtues of peaceful coexistence, either with regional neighbours or within Palestine.
New Historians and others
The new historians, as quoted above, were overwhelmingly Israeli academics and researchers availing themselves of both the newly released confidential government files as well as having direct access to the Palestinian population. Karsh’s condescending - and with a high probability, erroneous - remarks that the new historians were “[totally unfamiliar] with the Arab world - its language, culture, history, and politics - and their condescending treatment of the Palestinians as passive objects….” needs to be reflected in turn upon Karsh himself, as he appears to have viewed the whole spectrum of ideas through rose-coloured polarized laser narrow lenses.
The few new historians quoted above are not the only few that have searched the records and examined the history of Israel from a new perspective such that the “saga of Israel’s birth” has been given a new critical perspective that reaches beyond the officially proclaimed propaganda. Beyond those of Israeli heritage are other academics who are able to look at the historical record and give it its proper perspective, not just for the events of 1947-8 but within the overall context of Zionist intentions from the nineteenth century onward.
Avi Shlaim notes the “popular heroic-moralistic version of the 1948 war is the one that is taught in Israeli schools and used extensively in the quest for legitimacy abroad….Until recently this standard Zionist version of the events surrounding the birth of the State of Israel remained largely unchallenged outside the Arab world.” The “new historians” he indicates are not all that new as “Many of the arguments that are central to the new historiography were advanced long ago by Israeli writers, not to mention Palestinian, Arab, and Western writers.” His first example of the different interpretations concerns Ben-Gurion as being the driving force behind “the policy of expelling the Palestinians,” but follows with the note that these ideas are foreshadowed by Lieutenant-Colonel Israel Baer a former official historian for the IDF in 1966. Shlaim also indicates “Although many of the arguments of the new historiography are not new, there is a qualitative difference…” the difference being “access to official Israeli and Western documents.” [7]
As for the role of the historian, Shlaim says,

“the historian’s most fundamental task is not to chronicle but to evaluate…to subject the claims of all the protagonists to rigorous scrutiny and to reject all those claims, however deeply cherished, that do not stand up to such scrutiny. In my view many of the claims advanced by the old historians do not stand up to serious scrutiny. But that does not mean that everything they say is untrue.”

From my perspective, as an analyst and advocate, that reflects back onto Karsh, who says much of what is true, but again has only viewed the spectrum of ideas through rose-coloured polarized laser narrow lenses - he saw only what he wanted to see.
…a final few offerings…
Up to this point I have concentrated on Ben-Gurion, as he was central to the whole expulsion/war process and is frequently referenced by Karsh as extolling the virtues of retaining the Arab population within some scheme of peaceful co-existence. Again a reminder that what political figures say to different other people can be many faceted, used to argue, persuade, dissimulate, obfuscate, manipulate but very rarely to provide a balanced honest view with an advocacy of a truly legal humanitarian goal. There is far too much evidence that Ben-Gurion, particularly during the period preceding the Arab revolt before World War II discussed frequently and strongly the need to expel the Palestinian population in order to avoid the demographic problem (which ironically plagues the current situation in Israel, especially if one incorporates Gaza as a de facto Israeli protectorate).
To fully deconstruct Karsh’s arguments would involve a much longer article than the present one. The topics would still include more on Ben-Gurion, but also on other ideas that Karsh continually brings forth. But the overall themes, of Jewish acceptance and tolerance of the Palestinians, of Ben-Gurion’s advocacy of coexistence, and the “massive” military confronting the heroic outgunned Jewish settlers are all part of the canard that Karsh creates.
Canard
Karsh frequently uses the word “canard” to describe the historical record created by the new historians. The word itself is defined as “false report; hoax.” This does not mean that what is said is a “lie” as a false report or a hoax can be created by manipulation of data - omissions, insertion of hyperbole - “massive “ - conjectural statements - “
what ifs - maybe “true or not” - dissimulation - concealing and not acknowledging information - obfuscation (the use of big words to confuse the issue) - so Karsh is not accusing the new historians of lying, but of creating a hoax.
The bigger hoax upon analyzing and evaluating Karsh’s work is his own attempt to “reclaim the historical truth,” whereas in reality he does what he accuses, “to substitute propaganda for incontrovertible facts.” Karsh does have “facts”, but used as propaganda - the two actually go quite well together when one is creating a hoax. The missing information, the hidden information, the complete and fully analyzed historical record supports the ideas as represented by the “new historians.”
Betrayal
One of the particular outcomes of this work is both subtle yet obvious - a nuance of the idea of betrayal. The Israelis have always claimed that there are no leaders to negotiate peace with. This problem started particularly with the brutal British repression of the Arab revolt of 1937-39 and continues through to the present with the few leaders that rise to the occasion being assassinated, imprisoned and tortured, expelled, or bought out to become quisling representatives of the Palestinian people. The message, not stated, is clear from Karsh: the Arabs cannot be trusted as they would betray their own kind - and if they would betray their own kind, how could one expect to negotiate a peace treaty with them now? When one’s leaders are continually done away with in one form or another, yes, it is certainly hard to negotiate with them. One could of course be more democratic and give the people of occupied Palestine a referendum on what they wanted for their own future - as if the answer is not already known.
Karsh’s writing is a betrayal - a betrayal of truth, morality, and reality. Yes, the Palestinians were betrayed, yes they were betrayed by their own self-proclaimed leaders, but they were also betrayed by the presumption of Zionist moral superiority, by the British, the French and just about anyone else they came in contact with. That betrayal continues today, with the ignorance and arrogance of U.S. support for a militant, unforgiving, immoral occupation of a people who had little say in their own destiny as the imperial overlords fought to control and colonize their lands, farms, fields, towns, and villages, and to expel them in order to create a “pure” Jewish state.
“Palestine Betrayed” is a hoax - one that speaks the truth, yet conceals much more than it reveals, and creates a ’neo-revisionist’ canard about the Palestinian expulsion. In his own words, “rather than unearth new facts or offer novel interpretations”, Karsh has “recycled the standard [Zionist/Israeli] narrative of the conflict.” By all means read it, but also read the sources referenced here and follow along with other sources cross-referenced within them.
[1] Baroud, Ramzy. My Father Was a Freedom Fighter - Gaza’s Untold Story. Pluto Press, London, 2010. p 32-3.
[2] Pappe, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006. p. 136.
[3] Cook, Jonathon. Blood and Religion - The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Pluto Press, London, 2006. p. 112.
[4] Pappe, ibid. p. 93-4.
[5] Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 2006. p.46-49.
[6] Morris, Benny. One State, Two States - Resolving the Israeli/Palestine Conflict. Yale University Press, London, 2009, p.67.
[7] Shlaim, Avi. “The Debate about 1948.” Ed. Pappe, Ilan. The Israel/Palestine Question - A Reader. 2nd Edition. pp 139-160.
For further readings, a list of book reviews is available at Palestine Chronicle (search: Jim Miles); or at www.jim.secretcove.ca/index.Publications.html
Review by Jim Miles www.jim.secretcove.ca/index.Publications.html, first published in Palestine Chronicle.

'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Rob You, Enslave You, and Wage Aggressive Wars at Your Expense!

The Peoples Voice

It is still fashionable in the American media to deride 'conspiracies' with a blanket if illogical and uninformed smear. Conspiracies are, in fact, how things get done in either crime or commerce. Lately, there is little difference. When just one percent of the U.S. population owns more than the rest of us combined, we are expected to believe that this is the result of merit and commerce. But if we should cite the evidence that argues persuasively that this outcome is the result of a conspiracy of right wing politicians and the venal elites who bankroll them we are reviled and/or ridiculed. That's understandable! We should expect this pack of lies of anyone caught with a hand in the sugar bowl, benefiting financially for having hijacked the apparatus of government for purely venal and/or commercial benefit.
Conspiracies are how things get done. If legal, they are called 'corporations'. If not, they are criminal conspiracies and there is huge body of case law that disproves how utterly stupid is the meme: "conspiracies don't exist!" Tell it to the judge!
Very little is accomplished by anyone working alone, be it a 'lone gun man' in Dealy Plaza' or even Dick Cheney wishing to gain control of the oil fields of Iraq. The Dick, as you may recall, required a conspiracy, his 'Energy Task Force'. Like Hitler with Thyssen, Krupp, I.G. Farben et al, the Dick met with his co-conspirators, his 'Energy Task Force', just prior to 911. They met to carve up the oil fields of Iraq amongst them just as Hitler had coveted the coal in Poland.
We are expected to believe the official cover story that the subsequent 911 attacks were merely coincidental though they provided the essential pretext to attack and invade Iraq. We are expected to fall into line and goosestep. We are expected to just shut up and believe the corporate media.
Conspiracies need not be illegal though most of them probably are; else --why keep them secret? Why the campaign to convince you that they do not exist? If a conspiracy is legal, it's called a corporation. For awhile, Enron found that 'corporate person-hood' was the perfect cover. Like the Twin Towers later, Enron crashed as a result of its conspiratorial schemes which included putting the screws to California.
Conspiracy theorists on the high court have provided rich theorists and criminals yet another layer of cover: corporate person-hood! The robed conspiracy theorists have have said corporations are people! But if should you call those five idiots who, in fact, conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term 'conspirators', you will be denounced as a nut job! That the insane will call us 'nuts' is proof that we live in absurd, Kafkaesque times.
The SCOTUS decision makes 'corporations' people! Now any rag tag collection of crooks, ne'erdowells and/or robber barons can send money to the Secretary State in Delaware and receive in return a nice binder with impressive documents in it along with a genuine Delaware corporate seal! Thereafter, you --to0 --will be a real person! The Delaware Secretary of State had made it so! Now --I ask you --who is nuts? At one time, this cost about $5o and there were numerous 'registered agents' who would handle all the paper work for you.
The government often cites the specter of 'organized crime' in order to rally voters to a 'right wing' cause like 'law and order', a big issue in the 1960s. What is organized crime if not a conspiracy? In order to believe in the specter of 'organized crime', we must believe that 'conspiracies exist'. Either they exist or they do not! Either organized crime is real or it is not! Which is it? I despair that the idiots who run our government will ever make up their mind.
The government itself is, as St Thomas More said of the court of King Henry VIII, a 'conspiracy of rich men". These 'rich men', this mere one percent of the total population, will exploit whatever 'threat' is convenient to keep the people uninformed, enslaved and/or pacified. The perceived 'threats' are many and, over the years, the 'threats' have included hippies, black people, rock n' roll, crime syndicates, etc. But, most recently, the 'conspiracy of rich men' we call the government has hit the bonanza: terrorism.
In order to fully exploit this new buggaboo, the government had to demonize the religion of Islam. They had to raise the specter of racism, in this case, the 'brown skin' of many who live in the Middle East. This pack of liars had to resort to every trick in the book. But, to be honest, they were not very good at it and only the very, very stupid and/or naive feel for it.
Organized crime was a favorite 'boogie man' back in the 30s and 40s. After all, Al Capone was selling booze and screwing whores. But what are 'crime syndicates' if not conspiracies? Again --the government will have it both ways if it can get away with it.
The right wing establishment are themselves conspiracy theorists when it is useful but not otherwise. 911 is a case in point. The official theory of 19 Arab Hijackers is a conspiracy theory favored by the Bush administration though there is absolutely no admissible evidence to support it. It is 'Orwellian' that anyone proposing any 'other' conspiracy theory is labeled a 'conspiracy theorist' and reviled or called other names.
The government will turn a blind-eye to the fact that it is, itself, a conspiracy and not always a legal one. It was Ronald Reagan who --illegally --sold arms to Iran. Iran, at the time, had been officially declared enemy of the United States, a sponsor of world wide terrorism. Nevertheless, a 'conspiracy of rich men' would by way of its surrogate --the CIA --funneled proceeds of arms to Iran, a declared enemy, to the so-called Contras in Nicaragua. There is a word for a conspiracy of this type: traitors guilty of high treason:

The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances. The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law. The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths. --Lawrence Walsh, Special Prosecutor, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS

No one ever called the Senior Bush a 'conspiracy theorist' those he was one. But worse, he was a 'traitor' and so was Ronald Reagan.

"I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth." - Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Let's put this myth to rest forever. Conspiracies exist! OK? Last time I checked the Cornell University Law Library and FINDLAW, I found hundreds if not thousands of court decisions, having to do with conspiracies large and small, of one sort or another. If conspiracies do not exist, I would urge that someone, anyone please send a memo to that effect to the Supreme Court, tell them to stop handing down decisions having to do with 'conspiracies'. Do that! Then get back with me!
In his 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', William Shirer described a 'conspiracy of rich men'! A record of this conspiracy of Hitler survives. It includes corporate/business supporters, his financiers, his minions. Like Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' with respect to Iraq, Hitler's gang was a conspiracy to invade the nations of Europe, steal their resources and divide up the booty.

Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2) The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved. Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years." All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3) ----William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34

We are fortunate that no one 'informed' informed Shirer that conspiracies do not exist before he bothered unearthing the mountain of Nazi documents that prove the meeting, that prove the Nazi conspiracy to wage war and genocide for the benefit of global corporations that participated.
This meeting of 'industrialists' took place just as surely as did the meeting of Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' in which the oil fields of the the Middle East, Iraq in particular, were 'divvied' up among the conspirators. The results were published in a 'National Energy Policy' report in May 2001 [PDF] , several months before 911 would give them the pretext to make the report come true.
Another example is Heinrich Heydrich's infamous conspiracy was Heinrich Heydrich's meeting at Wannsee, attended by Nazi bureaucrats, and corporate kiss ups. Over a civilized lunch, this 'conspiracy of rich men' planned the extermination of the Jews of Europe.

... within a few months after the meeting, the first gas chambers were installed in some of the extermination camps in Poland. These six camps, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka were in operation in Poland. Responsibility for the entire project was placed in the hands of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, and head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS. The Wannsee Conference did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people. --The Wannsee Conference, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

Very little is accomplished by one person working alone unless you happen to be Michelangelo. Conspiracies exist! Our own Supreme Court has said so. This is ironic as the high court itself has deteriorated, devoled; they are, themselves, of late, a conspiracy of right wing extremists in service to just one percent of the population, the ruling one percent which, in fact, owns more than the rest of us combined. SCOTUS is owned!
Another tool of the ruling elite is the CIA, an acronym forever linked by time and space to the name George Bush Sr. Like Dan Quayle, Bush Sr was expert at saying nothing while moving his lips. In his presence, one was always in danger of death by boredom! Nevertheless, he was a Bonesman, the son of a traitor, a CIA 'operative'. He was and probably still is a very dangerous man! As Caesar said of Cassius, he had 'a lean and hungry look'!

A body of leads has been assembled which suggests that George Bush may have been associated with the CIA at some time before the autumn of 1963. According to Joseph McBride of The Nation, “a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities.” 1 By the time of the Kennedy assassination, we have an official FBI document which refers to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency,” and despite official disclaimers there is every reason to think that this is indeed the man in the White House today. The mystery of George Bush as a possible covert operator hinges on four points, each one of which represents one of the great political and espionage scandals of postwar American history. These four cardinal points are:

The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, launched on April 16-17, 1961, prepared with the assistance of the CIA’s “Miami Station” (also known under the code name JM/WAVE). After the failure of the amphibious landings of Brigade 2506, Miami station, under the leadership of Theodore Shackley, became the focus for Operation Mongoose, a series of covert operations directed against Castro, Cuba, and possibly other targets.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and the cover-up of those responsible for this crime.
The Watergate scandal, beginning with an April, 1971 visit to Miami, Florida by E. Howard Hunt on the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion to recruit operatives for the White House Special Investigations Unit (the “Plumbers” and later Watergate burglars) from among Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veterans.
The Iran-contra affair, which became a public scandal during October-November 1986, several of whose central figures, such as Felix Rodriguez, were also veterans of the Bay of Pigs.

George Bush’s role in both Watergate and the October surprise/Iran-contra complex will be treated in detail at later points in this book. Right now it is important to see that thirty years of covert operations, in many respects, form a single continuous whole. This is especially true in regard to the dramatis personae. Georgie Anne Geyer points to the obvious in a recent book: “…an entire new Cuban cadre now emerged from the Bay of Pigs. The names Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Eugenio Martinez would, in the next quarter century, pop up, often decisively, over and over again in the most dangerous American foreign policy crises. There were Cubans flying missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the Portuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate; Cubans played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the American move into the Persian Gulf.” 2 Felix Rodriguez tells us that he was infiltrated into Cuba with the other members of the “Grey Team” in conjunction with the Bay of Pigs landings; this is the same man we will find directing the contra supply effort in central American during the 1980’s, working under the direct supervision of Don Gregg and George Bush. 3 Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE station chief, will later show up in Bush’s 1979-80 presidential campaign. --Webster Tarpley, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , Chapter 8b – The Bay of Pigs and The Kennedy Assassination

The assassination of JFK is clearly a textbook example of the The Modus Operandi of the CIA? In this source insider Ralph McGehee, chronicles the work he performed for the CIA from 1952 through 1977.
Another book --Deadly Deceits --is sub-titled: My 25 years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1983). In this source is compiled a computer data base of CIA activities. Persons interested may write to him at: 422 Arkansas Ave., Herndon, VA 22070. (See http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIA_SOP.html .)

“...it is essential to provide background on the scope and nature of its worldwide operations. Between 1961 and 1975 the Agency conducted 900 major or sensitive operations, and thousands of lesser covert actions. The majority of its operations were propaganda, election or paramilitary. Countries of major concern, such as Indonesia in the early 1960s, were usually subjected to the CIA's most concerted attention. Critics of the CIA have aptly described the mainstays of such attention: "discrediting political groups... by forged documents that may be attributed to them. . . ." faking "communist weapon shipments,'' capturing communist documents and then inserting forgeries prepared by the Agency's Technical Services Division. --Ralph McGehee

Americans may be less informed about the CIA than residents of almost every other country. Americans are routinely, deliberately kept in the dark and lied to by a 'mainstream' media that often seems complicit. The MSM dare not tell the truth about the CIA. It is the rare media outlet that will risk alienating its advertising base. See: Steve Kangas: The Origins of the Overclass.
It is only coincidence, we are told, that the dead Kennedys had been a threat to the CIA and it is only a coincidence that they are dead because of it. It is only coincidence --we are told --that activist Steve Kangas had zeroed in on conservative crimes and failures just as Richard Mellon Scaife was bankrolling a jihad against Clinton. It was only coincidence that Bush Sr was photographed hanging around the front entrance to the Texas School Book depository just minutes prior to the murder of JFK. It was only coincidence that tramps looking like E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis et al were arrested for just hanging around the rail road tracks that run north and south just behind the grassy knoll. It was just coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr seemed to have prophesied his own death with his 'I Have a Dream' speech.

"The thing I am concerned about, and so is [Deputy Attorney General Nicholas] Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." --FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, speaking on the telephone to Johnson aide Walter Jenkins two hours after Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, HSCA Report, vol. III, pp. 471-73. (The Warren Commission -charged with determining the truth in the JFK assassination --relied upon Hoover's FBI as its primary investigative arm.) "We have not been told the truth about Oswald." ----Senator Richard Russell, former Warren Commission member, conversation with researcher Harold Weisberg in 1970, Whitewash IV

We have not been told the truth about the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But we know who the liars are and we know what it is they are lying about. We also know a great deal about why they lied as well as who is protected by the lies and why. It has also been my experience that only the guilty are sufficiently motivated to lie about a crime. Those who cover up a crime do so because they are guilty. By contrast, the innocent are motivated to tell the truth or to get at the truth. The innocent must insist that truth be told if they are to remain free. It was Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes who said: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"
The answer to that question might well have solved the JFK murder case! Had the train not been a threat, the FBI would not have removed every trace of it. Cover-ups, of course, are intended to protect the guilty. Something about the train --where earlier well-dressed tramps had been arrested --is germane to the plot to murder JFK. Tampering with evidence is always intended to protect the guilty. By removing the evidence, the FBI was not merely obstructing justice, it was protecting the identity/identities of murderers and traitors! Why would the FBI protect an assassin's get-away? It is reasonable to conclude that the FBI was and remains a part of the plot. See more at: Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK
The death of Lee Harvey Oswald relieved the government of having to get a conviction. Had Oswald gone to trial, he would have walked. The government 'case' against him would never have convinced a jury.
The magic bullet said to have created all of JFKs wounds was pristine; clearly, it had never been fired, had never struck anything. It was found on the wrong gurney at Parkland Hospital and could not have been placed at the scene of the crime. Oswald had to die because a competent judge would have thrown out the 'magic bullet'. Oswald would have walked and in 'walking' would have been a threat to the liar of the CIA, George Bush Sr who was photographed hanging around the front entrance of the TSBD just minutes before the shooting would start.
Nevertheless, we are expected to believe that a single bullet fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano was responsible for numerous wounds --a fatal one to JFK and serious wounds to Texas Governor John Connally. None of this would have gotten by a competent defense. The plotters concluded that it was better to destroy the evidence and kill all the witnesses.

“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of managing the public only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that that they have so ill acquired, and then that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they pleasure. And if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws. Yet these wicked men after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed among the Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of money being extinguished, much anxiety and great occasions of mischief is cut off with it. And who does not see that the frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions, seditions, murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are indeed rather punished than restrained by the severities of law, would all fall off, if money were not any more valued by the world? Men’s fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and watchings, would all perish in the same moment with the value of money; even poverty itself, for the relief of which money seems most necessary, would fall.” --St. Thomas More, Utopia

If the Military-Industrial Complex is not a 'conspiracy of rich men', then what is? If the Supreme Court has not deteriorated into a conspiracy of right wing ideologues, then why are not the dictionaries re-written and the thousands of pages of case law burned or dumped offshore? The 'conspiracy rich men' has been careless. Nevertheless, we are expected to buy the lies and die for this wicked, venal conspiracy.
Source: Peoples Voices

Uncovered: the unholy Zionist-EDL marriage

in Zionism

Dr. Hanan Chehata

The increasingly cosy relationship between the extremist, racist EDL movement and the ultra-racist Zionist movement in the UK is becoming more and more visible with each passing demonstration that they attend. It is now a common sight to see a mass of Israeli flags at an EDL rally and a mob of EDL members at a pro-Israel rally. This is an association which is at once revealing as to the true nature of the Zionist movement whilst also a source, one would assume, of much distress and embarrassment to right minded Jews who would blanch at such a self-defeating and counter-productive association.

For their part, the EDL clearly scrape the bottom of the barrel for members. It is hardly a thinking man's organisation. Typically comprised of thugs and louts it is scarcely a group that any sane individual would be proud to be a member of; and yet hundreds of Zionists have signed up to be a part of the new EDL " Jewish Division ". This includes individuals such as Roberta Moore, who makes a habit of inciting hatred against Muslims while running around with an Israeli flag tied around her neck like a cape. Exposing her ignorance with statements such as "Islam is not a religion but a cult" she does seem to fit the EDL's low criteria for membership. The foul vitriol she spewed at one recent EDL rally not only betrayed her ignorance of Islam but her desire to incite hatred against more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.
This is nothing knew and many have been forced recently to openly recant their spurious statements about Islam and Muslim organisations. Take for instance, the apology issued by The Spectator last week following Stephen Pollard's grossly absurd statement that Islam Expo is a racist, fascist and genocidal organisation! When challenged in court he claimed the remark was unintentional. Justice was served in this instance and Islam Expo won their case against The Spectator including an apology, legal costs and damages.

It is surely not hard to see why a fascist organisation recruiting Jewish Zionists seems like such a strange association at first. In their minds however, the Zionists have convinced themselves that they are manipulating the EDL, which may very well be the case. As Roberta Moore said in an interview with Haaretz recently, "They think the league is exploiting us, while it is really we who initiated the Jewish division. If anything, we are exploiting them." Funnily enough this is a claim that some BNP members also share. According to one report, "BNP leader Nick Griffin has claimed that the English Defence League is being manipulated and directed by Zionists to create a race war on the streets of Britain."

OK, so regardless of who is manipulating whom, we now have Jewish Zionist members of the EDL, and EDL members taking up Israeli flags as a standard part of their protest apparel, but who else do they associate with? A photo taken on 14th August this year shows Jonathan Hoffman, the Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation, waving an Israeli flag at a counter protest outside Ahava in Covent Gardens, standing side by side with none other than Roberta Moore. At first Hoffman tried to deny any association between them and insisted that the picture was photo shopped; a lie he had to apologise for on his blog on the Jewish Chronicle website last week (24th August). Given the fact that Roberta has reportedly said "she used to support Rabbi Meir Kahane's far-right Kach party in Israel", (a group so extreme that it has even been banned in Israel and has been designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the USA and the EU among others), this only further exposes the extremist element present within the Zionist demonstrations that people like Hoffman so regularly attends.

Hoffman should stop being so surprised and acting so wounded when he is excluded from public events given such associations. He has whined on many occasions about being ejected from or excluded from public meetings on Palestine. He complained for instance when he was stopped by police at the House of Commons from entering a meeting co-hosted by the Middle East Monitor (MEMO) and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), despite the fact that he was ejected for trying to get into the meeting firstly without registering and then by using a false name. However, as Sarah Colborne, director of campaigns and operations at PSC, pointed out, ‘moreover, like any organisation, we cannot welcome people who disrupt meetings, shout down speakers, refuse to let others speak, and fail to halt their disruptive activities when politely asked to do so by the chair. Such behaviour is contrary to the principles of democracy, and is actually an attempt to shut down free speech. Jonathan Hoffman, in several previous meetings, has behaved in the manner described, leading to his ejection by the police.'

Such behaviour has become the staple norm for those such as Hoffman and his cabal. Shouting down speakers as he did at the Amnesty International meeting held for Haaretz writer Gideon Levy, chaired by Jon Snow last week (24th August), was only the latest example of Hoffman's predictable and feeble attempts to disrupt any public meeting that dares to point out the human rights violations and moral inadequacies of his great nation of Israel.

The fact that people such as Moore allegedly had or have associations with the extremist terrorist groups such as Kach and are joining forces with the EDL should be a cause of concern not only to British society as a whole but to Jewish people in particular who are at risk of such extreme elements claiming to speak for them.

Zionists may temporarily revel in their acceptance by groups such as the EDL and they may be temporarily united under the banner that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but they should ask themselves, who is next on the bigoted hit list of groups such as the EDL after Islam? The memory of any Jew who joins the rank and file with the likes of the EDL seems short indeed and they do a grave disservice to all the Jewish men and women who have spent their lives tackling racism and anti-Semitism. Before they begin to rant and rave about Muslim extremism, Zionists should check out their own associates first and perhaps be more discriminating as to whom they allow to speak for them.
Source: Middle-East Monitor

Israel gave 'licence to kill' on Gaza ship: Israeli Arab MP

Outspoken Arab Israeli MP Haneen Zuabi on Tuesday told a UN human rights inquiry into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that its commandos had a "licence to kill."

The State and Local Bases of Zionist Power in America

in Zionism

BY James Petras

Netanyahu --Speaking in New York to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,

Introduction

Any serious effort to understand the extraordinary influence of the Zionist power configuration over US foreign policy must examine the presence of key operatives in strategic positions in the government and local Zionist organizations affiliated with mainstream Jewish organizations and religious orders.

There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations actively engaged in promoting Israel’s foreign policy, economic and technological agenda in the US (see the appendix).

The grassroots membership ranges from several hundred thousand militants in the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) to one hundred thousand wealthy contributors, activists and power brokers in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In addition scores of propaganda mills, dubbed think tanks, have been established by million dollar grants from billionaire Zionists including the Brookings Institute (Haim Saban) and the Hudson Institute among others. Scores of Zionist funded political action committees (PAC) have intervened in all national and regional elections, controlling nominations and influencing election outcomes. Publishing houses, including university presses have been literally taken over by Zionist zealots, the most egregious example being Yale University, which publishes the most unbalanced tracts parroting Zionist parodies of Jewish history (Financial Times book review section August 28/29 2010). New heavily funded Zionist projects designed to capture young Jews and turn them into instruments of Israeli foreign policy includes “Taglit-Birthright” which has spent over $250 million dollars over the past decade sending over a quarter-million Jews (between 18-26) to Israel for 10 days of intense brainwashing (Boston Globe August 26, 2010). Jewish billionaires and the Israeli state foot the bill. The students are subject to a heavy dose of Israeli style militarism as they are accompanied by Israeli soldiers as part of their indoctrination; at no point do they visit the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem (Boston Globe August 26, 2010). They are urged to become dual citizens and even encouraged to serve in the Israeli armed forces. In summary the 52 member organizations of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations which we discuss are only the tip of the iceberg of the Zionist Power Configuration: taken together with the PACs, the propaganda mills, the commercial and University presses and mass media we have a matrix of power for understanding the tremendous influence they have on US foreign and domestic policy as it affects Israel and US Zionism.
While all their activity is dedicated first and foremost in ensuring that US Middle East policy serves Israel’s colonial expansion in Palestine and war aims in the Middle East, what B’nai B’rth euphemistically calls a “focus on Israel and its place in the world”, many groups ‘specialize’ in different spheres of activity. For example, the “Friends of the Israel Defense Force” is primarily concerned in their own words “to look after the IDF”, in other words provide financial resources and promote US volunteers for a foreign army (an illegal activity except when it involves Israel). Hillel is the student arm of the Zionist power configuration claiming a presence in 500 colleges and universities, all affiliates defending each and every human rights abuse of the Israeli state and organizing all expenses paid junkets for Jewish student recruits to travel to Israel where they are heavily propagandized and encouraged to ‘migrate’ or become ‘dual citizens’.

Method: Studying Zionist Power:

There are several approaches for measuring the power of the combined Zionist organizations and influential occupants of strategic positions in government and the economy. These include (a) reputational approach (b) self claims (c) decision-making analysis (d) structural inferences. Most of these approaches provide some clues about Zionist potential power. For example, newspaper pundits and journalists frequently rely on Washington insiders, congressional staff and notables to conclude that AIPAC has the reputation for being one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. This approach points to the need to empirically examine the operations of AIPAC in influencing Congressional votes, nomination of candidates, defeating incumbents who do not unconditionally support the Israeli line. In other words analyzing the Congressional and Executive decision- making process is one key to measuring Zionist power. But it is not the only one. Zionist power is a product of a historical context , where media ownership and wealth concentration and other institutional levers of power come into play and shape the current decision-making framework. Cumulative power over time and across institutions creates a heavy bias in the political outcomes favorable to Israel’s organized agents in America. Once again the mere presence of Jews or Zionists in positions of economic, cultural and political power does not tell us how they will use their resources and whether they will have the desired effect . Structural analysis , the location of Zionists in the class structure, is necessary but not sufficient for understanding Zionist power. One has to proceed and analyze the content of decisions made and not made regarding the agenda of Israel’s backers operating in the USA. The 52 major Zionists organizations are very open about their claims to power, their pursuit of Israel’s agenda and their subservience to each and every Israeli regime.
Those who deny Zionist power over US Mid East foreign policy are left-Zionists namely Noam Chomsky and his acolytes. They never analyze the legislative process, executive decision-making, the structures and activity of the million member Zionist grassroots and the appointments and background of key policy makers deciding strategic policies in the Middle East. Instead they resort to superficial generalizations and political demagogy, imputing policy to “Big Oil” and the “military-industrial complex” or “US imperialism”. Categories devoid of empirical content and historical context about real existing policy making regarding the Middle East.

The Making of Zionist Power in the US Government

To understand US submission to Israeli war policies in the Middle East one has to look beyond the role of lobbies pressuring Congress and the role of political action committees and wealthy Zionist campaign contributions. A much neglected but absolutely essential building block of Zionist power over US foreign economic, diplomatic and military policy is the Zionist presence in key policy positions, including the Departments of Treasury and State, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the White House.
Operating within the top policymaking positions, Zionist officials have consistently pursued policies in line with Israel’s militarist policies, aimed at undermining and eliminating any country critical of the Jewish States’ colonial occupation of Palestine, its regional nuclear monopoly, its expansion of Jews only settlements and above all its strident efforts to remain the dominant power in the Arab East. The Zionist policymakers in Government are in constant consultation with the Israeli state, ensuring coordination with the Israeli military (IDF) command, its Foreign Office and secret police (MOSSAD) and compliance with the Jewish State’s political line. Over the past 24 months not a single Zionist policymaker has voiced any criticism of Israel’s most heinous crimes, ranging from the savaging of Gaza to the massacre of the humanitarian flotilla and the expansion of new settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. A record of loyalty to a foreign power which even exceeds the subservience of the Stalinist and Nazi fellow travelers in Washington during the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Zionist policymakers in strategic positions depend on the political backing and work closely with their counterparts in the “lobbies” (AIPAC) in Congress and in the national and local Jewish Zionist organizations. Many of the leading Zionist policymakers rose to power through a deliberate strategy of infiltrating the government to shape policy promoting Israel’s interest over and above the interests of the US populace. While a degree of cohesion resulting from a common allegiance to Tel Aviv can account for suspected nepotism and selection, it is also the case that the powerful Jewish lobbies can play a role in creating key positions in Government and ensuring that one of their own will occupy that position and pursue Israel’s agenda .

Stuart Levey: Israel’s Foremost Operative in the US Government

Stuart Levey, Who is he? He is the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

In 2004, AIPAC successfully pressured the Bush Administration to create the office of Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (UTFI) and to name its protégé Princeton graduate Stuart Levey to that position. Before, but especially after his appointment, Levey was in close collaboration with the Israeli state and was known as an over the top Zionist zealot with unbounded energy and blind worship of the Israeli state.

Within the confines of his Zionist ideological blinders, Levey applied his intelligence to the singular task of turning his office into the major foreign policy venue for setting US policy toward Iran. Levey more than any other appointed official in government or elected legislator, formulates and implements policies which profoundly influence US, European Union and UN economic relations with Iran. Levey elaborated the sanctions policies, which Washington imposed on the EU and the Security Council. Levey, organizes the entire staff under his control at Treasury to investigate trade and investment policies of all the world’s major manufacturing, banking, shipping, petroleum and trading corporations. He then criss-crosses the US and successfully pressures pension funds, investment houses, oil companies and economic institutions to disinvest from any companies dealing with Iran’s civilian economy. He has gone global, threatening sanctions and blackballing dissident companies in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America which refuse to surrender economic opportunities. They all understood Levey operated at the behest of Israel, services Levey has proudly performed.

Levey coordinates his campaign with Zionist leaders in Congress. He secures sanctions legislation in line with his campaigns. His policies clearly violate international law and national sovereignty, pressing the limits of extra territorial enforcement of his administrative fiats against a civilian economy. His violation of economic sovereignty parallels Obama’s announcement that US Special Forces would operate in violation of political sovereignty on four continents. For all intents and purposes, Levey makes US policy toward Iran. At each point he designs the escalation of sanctions, and then passes it on to the White House, which shoves it down the throats of the Security Council. Once new sanctions approved by Levey and staff are in place they are there to enforce them: identifying violators and implementing penalties. Treasury has become an outpost of Tel Aviv. Not a single leftist, liberal or social democratic publication highlights the role of Levey or even the terrible economic pain this Old Testament fanatic is inflicting on 75 million Iranian civilian workers and consumers. Indeed like Israel’s Judeo-fascist rabbis who preach a “final solution” for Israel’s enemies, Levey announces new and harsher “punishment” against the Iranian people (Stuart Levey, “Iran’s New Deceptions at Sea Must be Punished” FT 8/16/2010, p. 9). Perhaps at the appropriate moment the Jewish State will name a major avenue through the West Bank for his extraordinary services to this most unholy racist state.

The Strategic Role of Local Power

The Israel Lobby Archive recently released declassified documents of the American Zionist Council (AZC) subpoenaed during a US Senate investigation between 1962-63. The documents reveal how the Israeli state through its American Jewish conduits – the mainstream Zionist organizations – penetrated the US mass media and propagated its political line, unbeknownst to the American public. Stories written by a host of Jewish Zionist journalists and academics were solicited and planted in national media such as The Readers Digest , The Atlantic Monthly , Washington Post among others, including regional and local newspapers and radio stations (Israel Lobby Archive , August 18, 2010). While the national Zionist organizations procured the journalists and academic writers and editors, it was the local affiliates who carried the message and implemented the line. The level of infiltration the Senate subpoenaed Zionist documents in the 1960’s reveal has multiplied a hundred fold over the past 50 years in terms of financing, paid functionaries and committed militants and above all in structural power and coercive capability.
While the national leaders in close consultation with Israeli officials receive instructions on which issues are of high priority, the implementation follows a vertical route to regional and local leaders, politicians, and notables who in turn target the local media and religious, academic and other opinion leaders. When national leaders ensure publication of pro Israeli propaganda, the locals reproduce and circulate it to local media and non-Zionist influentials on their “periphery”. Letter campaigns orchestrated at the top are implemented by thousands of militant Zionist doctors, lawyers and businesspeople. They praise pro-Israel scribes and attack critics; they pressure newspapers , publishing houses and magazines not to publish dissidents. The national and local leaders promote hostile reviews of books not promoting the Israeli line, influence library decisions to pack their shelves with pro Israeli books and censor and exclude more balanced or critical histories. Local militants in co-ordination with Israeli consuls saturate the public with thousands of public meetings and speakers targeting Christian churches, academic audiences and civic groups; at the same time local Zionist militants and, especially millionaire influentials, pressure local venues (university administrators, church authorities and civic associations) to disinvite any critic of Israel and their supporters from speaking. In the last resort, local Zionists demand that a pro-Israel propagandist be given equal time, something unheard of when an Israel apologist is scheduled to speak.
Local Zionist organizations make yeoman efforts to recruit mayors, governors, local celebraties, publishers, church people and promising young ethnic and minority leaders by offering them all expenses paid propaganda junkets to Israel and then to write or give interviews parroting what they were fed by Israeli officials. Local leaders mobilize thousands of militant activist Zionists to attack anti-Zionist Jews in public and private. They demand they be excluded from any media roundtables on the Middle East.
Local Zionist functionaries form rapid response committees to visit and threaten any local publisher and editorial staff publishing editorials or articles questioning the Israeli party line. Local leaders police (“monitor”) all local meetings, speaker invitations, as well as the speeches of public commentators, religious leaders and academics to detect any “anti-Zionist overtones’ (which they label “covert anti-Semitism”). Most of the majorlocal Israeli fundraising, including the financing of new “Jews only” settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. Jewish religious orders are lined up as the clerical backbone of
Local functionaries are in the forefront of campaigns to deny independent Middle East specialists and public policy academics, appointments, tenure or promotion, independently of the quality of their scholarship. On the other hand, academic hacks who toe the pro-Israel line, by publishing books with blanket attacks on Israeli critics among Christians and Muslims and countries like Turkey, Iran or whoever is a target of Israeli policy, are promoted, lauded and put on the best seller list. Any book or writer critical of Zionist Power or Israel is put on a local and national ‘index’ and subject to an inquisition by slander from a stable of Jewish Torquemadas.

Conclusion

The power of Israel in the US does not reside only in the influence and leadership of powerful Washington based “pro-Israel lobbies”, like AIPAC. Without the hundreds of thousands of militant locally based dentists, podiatrists, stockbrokers, real estate brokers,profesors and others, the “lobby” would be unable to sustain and implement its policy among hundreds of millions of Americans outside the major metropolises. As we have seen from the Senate declassified documents, over a half-century ago, local Zionist organizations began a systematicpenetration , control and intimidation that has reached its pinnacle in the first decade of the 21^st century. It is no accident or mere coincidence that University officials in Northern Minnesota or upstate New York are targeted to exclude speakers or fire faculty members critical of Israel. Local Zionists have computerized databanks operating with an index of prohibited speakers, as the Zionists themselves admit and flaunt in contrast to “liberal” Zionists who are prone to label as “anti-Semitic” or “conspiracy theorists” writers who cite official Zionist documents demonstrating their systematic perversion of our democratic freedoms. campaign of

Over the decades, the distinction between Zionist power exercised by a “lobby” outside the government and operatives “inside” the government has virtually vanished. As we have seen, in our case study, AIPACsecured the undersecretary position in Treasury, dictated the appointment of a key Zionist operative (Stuart Levey) and accompanies his global crusade to sanction Iran into starvation and destitution. The planting of operatives within key Middle East positions in government is not the simple result of individual career choices. The ascent of so many pro-Israel Zionist to government posts is part of their mission to serve Israel’s interest at least for a few years of their careers. Their presence in government precludes any Senate or Congressional investigations of Zionists organizations acting as agents of a foreign power as took place in the 1960’s.
As the major Zionist organizations and influentials have accumulated power and abused the exercise of power on behalf of an increasingly bloody racist state, which flaunts its dominance over US institutions, public opposition is growing. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is gaining strength even in the US (see Harvard divestment in Israeli companies). US public support for Israel, by all measures, has dropped below 50%, while polls in Western Europe show a marked increase in hostility to Israel’s ultra-rightist regime. Anti-Zionist Jews are growing in influence especially among young Jews who are appalled by the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and assault on the humanitarian flotilla. Equally important the presence of anti-Zionist Jews on panels and forums has given courage to many otherwise intimidated non-Jews who heretofore were fearful of being labeled “anti-Semitic”.
The Zionist power configuration rests on a declining population base : most young Jews marry outside the confines of the ethno-religious Jewish-Israeli nexus and many of them are not likely to form the bases for rabid campaigns on behalf of a racist state. The Zionist leadership’s high intensity and heavily endowed effort to fence in young people of Jewish ancestry via private schools, subsidized “summer programs” in Israel etc. are as much out of fear and recognition of the drift away from clerical chauvinism as it is an attempt to recruit a new generation of Israel First militants.
The danger is that the US Zionist support for the ultra-rightist and racist regime in Israel is leading them to join forces with the far right in the US. Today Jewish and Christian Manhattan rednecks are fermenting mass Islamic hatred (the so called “Mosque controversy”) as a distraction from the economic crises and rising unemployment. Zionist promotion of mass Islamofobia, so near to Wall Street, where many of their fat cats who profit from plundering the assets of America operate, is a dangerous game. If the same enraged masses turn their eyes upward toward the wealthy and powerful instead of downward to blacks and Muslims, some unpleasant and unanticipated surprises might rebound against, not only Israel’s operatives, but all those wrongly identified as related to a misconstrued Jewish Motherland.
Appendix
Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations
Member Organizations

Ameinu
American Friends of Likud
American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
America-Israel Friendship League
American Israel Public Affairs Committee
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Congress
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
American Sephardi Federation
American Zionist Movement
Americans for Peace Now
AMIT
Anti-Defamation League
Association of Reform Zionists of America
B’nai B’rith International
Bnai Zion
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Development Corporation for Israel/State of Israel Bonds
Emunah of America
Friends of Israel Defense Forces
Hadassah, Women’s Zionist Organization of America
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
Jewish Community Centers Association
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
The Jewish Federations of North America
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Jewish Labor Committee
Jewish National Fund
Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
Jewish War Veterans of the USA
Jewish Women International
MERCAZ USA, Zionist Organization of the Conservative Movement
NA’AMAT USA
MCSK” Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Young Israel
ORT America
Rabbinical Assembly
Rabbinical Council of America
Religious Zionists of America
Union for Reform Judaism
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
WIZO
Women’s League for Conservative Judaism
Women of Reform Judaism
Workmen’s Circle
World ORT
World Zionist Executive, US
Zionist Organization of America

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.

Window Into Palestine

Palestine News from Palestine and around the Globe...A Different Perspective.