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ISRAEL ATTACKS GAZA HUMANITARIAN AID FLOTILLA

freepaliadmin — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:08:00 GMT

Cartoon by: Carlos Latuff

In an international act of piracy and murder in international waters, the Israeli navy intercepted, boarded, and opened fire on humanitarian activists on a flotilla of ships attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian Gaza Strip.

According to news reports, Israeli commandos killed as many as 9 humanitarian activists on board one ship, and have abducted all 700 passengers on board the six boats composing the flotilla who are in the process of being sent against their will to Israel for arrest and/or deportation.

The reaction of the Obama Administration to Israel's attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla, which included U.S. citizens, has been tepid. A White House spokesperson stated that he "deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained."

Of course, this statement completely ignores U.S. complicity in arming Israel and enabling its human rights abuses. In July 2008, the United States signed a contract worth $1.9 billion to transfer the latest-generation of naval combat vessels to Israel at U.S. taxpayer expense. Currently, Congress is in the process of appropriating a record $3.2 billion in military aid to Israel this budget year.

Events are moving quickly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently canceled his meeting tomorrow at the White House to return to Israel. Later today, the UN Security Council is set to address Israel's attack on the humanitarian flotilla.

This article was reproduced from www.endtheoccupation.org

WHY IS ISRAEL AFRAID OF A FEW BOATS?

freepaliadmin — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:04:00 GMT

BY: YOUSEF MUNAYYER

Hundreds of activists are on their way to the blockaded Gaza strip via a "flotilla" of boats carrying humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, which are badly lacking in the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Israel has promised to intercept the good-willed boats and arrest and deport the activists. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has exerted great effort in the past few days to convince onlookers to this confrontation on the high seas that the activists carrying humanitarian goods are terrorist sympathizers, and that everything is just fine and dandy in the Gaza Strip. The ministry has portrayed Israel (the country enforcing the blockade of Gaza's ports) as a benevolent victim, who despite the threat from Gaza's Hamas government is still caring for the civilian population.

There comes a point when an oppressive regime's propaganda crosses a threshold from mere lies to utter lunacy so extreme, in fact, that objective onlookers find it almost comical. This point came yesterday when the Government Press Office disseminated a link to a Gaza restaurant which appears to be luxurious. So what Israel is essentially saying is: "There you have it. There is a website for a restaurant with cloth napkins in Gaza. How can there be any problems?"

The reality is, of course, that the situation in Gaza is very dire. A slew of reports from human rights organizations attest to the hardships faced by most Palestinians in Gaza. In the densely populated strip where 80 percent of the population are refugees, a similar percentage relies on international aid organizations for daily sustenance. That number was only ten percent a decade ago. That's how bad things have become. Malnutrition in children has reached ten percent and critical medicines are not available, according to the World Health Organization.

But no one is starving to death in Gaza–at least not suddenly. A tunnel industry has evolved and become the main supplier for most goods. That's all part of the plan. Israel seeks to squeeze the strip to the point of near catastrophe, bad enough to make people suffer, but just short of having to take responsibility for it. It's a form of torture kind of like water-boarding under the Bush administration: the objective is to bring the subject to the edge and break his will, but not kill him (lest they be charged with murder). But just because Gaza's civilian population has managed to keep its collective head above water doesn't mean things should be this way.

Like life in most prisons, if you "know a guy," anything is available for a price. Generators, for example, are in high demand because of the shortages of electricity. The shortages are due to the destruction of Gaza's only power plant in 2006 by Israeli jets. Since then, Israel has never permitted the full reconstruction of the power plant, forcing perpetual dependence of Gaza on Israel and Egypt, who take an eye-dropper approach to supplying Gaza with electricity. But even though generators smuggled through Gaza's tunnels provide some light, there is also a dark and often unheard downside that comes with them: explosions and fires. Several reports in the past few years of civilians being killed or maimed from overworked and exploding generators have become common. These are just some of the siege-related causalities we do not hear about.

The 10,000 tons of supplies aboard the Gaza aid ships are a drop in the bucket for what Gaza really needs. Israel's spokesmen have pointed out that they have permitted the entry of supplies in the past and argued that the aid boats are unnecessary. The reality is that aid which Israel does permit into Gaza is purchased by Palestinians, vetted and often rejected or held up for months. Israel has calculated the precise minimum necessary caloric intake for Palestinians in Gaza, and has often rejected things like pasta, lentils and coffee. So it's easy to understand why international humanitarian organizations and the activists aboard the aid boats are not about to trust the welfare of Gaza's civilians to Israel's benevolence.

The aid boats will have a far greater impact, however, than the 10,000 tons of aid they are bringing to Gaza. The aid boats compel us to have this discussion, a discussion that Israel desperately wants to avoid at a time when its international reputation has never been lower.

Hundreds of unarmed civilians carrying humanitarian aid are approaching a blockaded piece of land where 1.5 million civilians suffer from a life of uncertainty and despair, and Israel is going to stop them. While much of the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue has been on the settlements, the failed peace process and the long-awaited restart of talks about talks, Gaza has been forgotten. To their credit, the few hundred non-violent activists-turned-sailors have found a way to maximize their power as individuals to force one of the world's most powerful regimes into a corner. Whether the boats make it to Gaza or not, this is a tremendous victory for civil society in international affairs.

Headlines and stories covering this confrontation at sea will shift the focus back to Gaza, even if only for a few hours. For Israel, Gaza is the tortured and famished step-child it locks in the basement when visitors arrive, and the activists on these boats seek to expose what Israel is doing in the strip: imposing a draconian siege to collectively punish civilians for political aims.

This article originally appeared on Foreignpolicy.com.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center.

http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/12964/pid/2254

WHY ISRAEL ALWAYS PREVAILS

freepaliadmin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:52:00 GMT

(of course you don't see who's cropped out, but they hold up the whole thing)

BY: JEFFREY BLANKFORT

If the State Department had issued travel advisory warnings to US government officials about to travel to Israel, Vice President Joe Biden would have no doubt ignored them. A better friend to Israel could not have been found in the 36 years that Biden represented Delaware in the US Senate and there was speculation that his popularity among Jewish voters and major Jewish donors was the primary reason he was added to the Democratic ticket. According to all reports, Biden’s trip was to mend fences with the Israeli officials and with the Israeli Jewish public which had become disenchanted with the Obama administration where the president’s popularity is measured in the low single digits.

Indeed, even a day after having been blind-sided by the announcement that Israel would build 1600 new and exclusively Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, Biden was still trying. In a prepared speech, he once again bragged, this time to a Tel Aviv university audience, that he was a Zionist and that, “Throughout my career, Israel has not only remained close to my heart but it has been the center of my work as a United States Senator and now as Vice President of the United States,” a statement that should raise questions about dual loyalties and which, curiously, was omitted from all reports on his speech in the US press.

In addition, Biden repeated what he said on his arrival in Jerusalem, that, “There is no space — this is what they [the world] must know, every time progress is made, it's made when the rest of the world knows there is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to security, none. No space. That's the only time when progress has been made.” Biden did not offer any examples of such progress and would have had a hard time doing so.

It was not until the end of his speech, after he had thoroughly regurgitated the standard Israeli line on the threats to its existence from Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, that he felt safe to offer words of criticism for his treatment at the hands of his hosts. The words of condemnation issued the previous day, however, were patently missing. Almost apologizing for doing so, Biden told his audience:

“Now, some legitimately may have been surprised that such a strong supporter of Israel for the last 37 years and beyond… as an elected official, how I can speak out so strongly given the ties that I share as well as my country shares with Israel. But quite frankly, folks, sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth.

“And I appreciate… the response your Prime Minister today announced this morning that he is putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence of that sort of that sort of events [sic] and who clarified that the beginning of actual construction on this particular project would likely take several years … That's significant, because it gives negotiations the time to resolve this, as well as other outstanding issues. Because when it was announced, I was on the West Bank. Everyone there thought it had meant immediately the resumption of the construction of 1,600 new units.”

What, of course, Biden meant was not that Israel should not be able do as it pleases in East Jerusalem, but that announcements of its plans should be handled in a more tactful manner, when, presumably, he, or other US officials are several thousand miles away.

Biden, of course, was patently ignoring repeated statements by Netanyahu that Israel’s decisions to build in East Jerusalem will not be subject either to pressure from Washington or negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Moreover, as Ha’aretz noted, those projected 1600 units are only a small part of 50,000 units planned for the eastern part of the city, which was annexed in 1967, and which are designed to preclude it not only from becoming the capital of a Palestinian state but also to prevent Palestinian residents of the city from traveling to the West Bank.

According to Yediot Ahronoth, Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Biden had privately complained to Netanyahu that Israel’s behavior was “starting to get dangerous for us.” “What you’re doing here,” he reportedly said, “undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.” That Biden made such a statement has been denied by the White House, but it follows closely an earlier memorandum sent by General Petraeus to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his testimony before a US Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

In his prepared statement, Petraeus depicted the Israeli-Arab conflict as the first “cross cutting challenge to security and stability” in the CENTCOM area of responsibility [AOR]. “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR.”

Treading in an area where few members of the US military have dared to go before, Petraeus observed that “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.” It should be noted that neither the NY Times’ Elizabeth Bumiller nor the Washington Post’s Anne Flaherty included any reference to these comments by Petraeus in their coverage of his testimony.

In other words, in the view of Gen. Petraeus, resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is critical to the US national interest and that, plus his reference to the “perception” of Washington’s pro-Israel bias, is what may have been what, for the moment, occasioned President Obama through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ratchet up the criticism and publicly brand Israel’s treatment of Biden as “insulting.”

Rather than letting the issue die, she had her office publicize the fact that she had given a piece of her mind to Netanyahu in a 43 minute phone call in which, according to her spokesperson, P.J. Crowley, she described the planned units in East Jerusalem as sending a “deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president's trip" and that "this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests."

Moreover, she made three demands of Netanyahu that were spelled out in the Israeli press but which were only alluded to in the US media: cancelling the decision to approve the 1600 units, making a "significant" gesture to the Palestinian Authority to get it back to the bargaining table, and issuing a public statement that the indirect talks will deal with all the core issues, including Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. Pretty heady stuff for those used to see Clinton falling all over herself to show her loyalty to Israel.

To emphasize the US position, the Obama administration cancelled the scheduled visit of Middle East envoy George Mitchell who had planned to meet with Israelis and Palestinians in what had been touted by the administration as “proximity talks.”

The gravity of the situation was not lost upon Israel’s new ambassador, American-born historian, Michael Oren, who, in a conference call with Israel’s US consulates, reportedly expressed the opinion (which he now denies) that this was the worst crisis in US-Israel relations since 1975 when Pres. Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly blamed Israel for the breakdown of negotiations with Egypt over withdrawing from the Sinai. As a consequence, Ford announced that he was going to make a major speech calling for a reassessment of Israel-US relations. Although hardly the powerhouse that it has become today, AIPAC, the only officially registered pro-Israel lobby, responded to the threat by getting 76 senators to sign a harsh letter to Ford, warning him not to tamper with Israel-US relations. Ford never made the speech and it would not be the last time that AIPAC got three quarters of the US Senate to sign a letter designed to keep an American president in check.

Others point to the nationally televised speech on September 12, 1991 of the first President Bush, who, upon realizing that AIPAC had secured enough votes in both houses of Congress to override his veto of Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, went before the American public depicting himself as “one lonely man” battling a thousand lobbyists on Capitol Hill. A national poll taken immediately afterward gave the president an 85 per cent approval rating which sent the lobby and its Congressional flunkies scuttling into the corner but not before AIPAC director, Tom Dine, exclaimed at that date, Sept. 12, 1991, “would live in infamy.” Following the election of Yitzhak Rabin the following year and up for re-election himself, Bush relented and approved the loan guarantee request.

There are those who, while aware of what happened to Ford and of the subsequent humiliations visited by Israel upon American presidents and secretaries of state, view the Biden affair as a charade designed to placate the heads of Arab governments as well as their respective peoples and give the impression that there is a space between Israel and the US when it comes to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict when, they assert, none exists.

Viewing the unrelenting expansion of Jewish settlements and settlers in the West Bank through one US administration after another for the past four decades they would appear to have a solid argument. It is undermined, however, by one obvious fact: while the rest of the world considers the Israel-Palestine conflict to be a foreign policy concern, for Washington and both Democrats and Republicans it has been and remains primarily a domestic issue. In that arena there is only one player, the pro-Israel “lobby” which is represented by a multitude of organizations, the most prominent of which is AIPAC.

As if it needed more help, flocking to Israel’s side in increasing numbers over the past several decades have come the majority of America’s Christian evangelicals whose doomsday theology fits in nicely with that of Israel’s ultra right wing settler movement. The result is that in each election cycle anyone with any hope of being elected to a national political office, be it in the White House or Congress, whether incumbent or challenger, feels obligated to express his or her unconditional loyalty to Israel by shamelessly groveling for handouts from Jewish donors and the nod from Jewish voters who make up critical voting blocs in at least six states.

This being the case, it is not so strange that a string of leading elected American officials would willingly submit to public humiliation by a country so politically and militarily dependent on the U.S. and whose population is less than that of New York City or Los Angeles County, even when doing so has made the U.S. seem weak in the eyes of a world in which Washington has other, more pressing interests, than pleasing Israel. There is no better example of this phenomenon than Barack Obama whose stature as leader of “the world’s only superpower” has been severely undercut by repeated verbal face-slappings at the hands of Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers.

It clearly has been in the US interest that the Israel-Palestine conflict be peacefully resolved. There is nothing in the proposed “two-state solution” that would interfere with Washington’s regional objectives. On the contrary, the creation of a truncated Palestinian statelet, allied and dependent, politically and financially on the US, as it most certainly would be, would be a boon to US regional interests and ultimately viewed as a setback for anti-imperialist struggles worldwide. It was not just to expend some US taxpayers’ money that the GW Bush administration built a four story security building for the PA in Ramallah (that Sharon later destroyed), brought PA security personnel to Langley, VA for training with the CIA, and had Gen. Dayton build a colonial army to maintain order.

Israeli officials view all of this from a very different perspective, as should be obvious, and will do everything they can to prevent any kind of a Palestinian entity from coming into existence since this would interfere not only with its expansion plans but would also create a junior competitor for US favors in the region. This was why Sharon targeted the US built institutions on the West Bank and the CIA trained personnel during the Al-Aksa Intifada despite the fact that they were non-participants, which raised the hackles at CIA headquarters, as reported at the time in the Washington Post.

What the insult to Biden was clearly designed to do, as were the previous humiliations, was to remind the current and future occupants of the White House that when it comes to making decisions concerning the Middle East, it is Israel that calls the tune. As Stephen Green spelled it out in "Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel" (Morrow, 1984) a quarter century ago, "Since 1953, Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with tactical issues."

That Netanyahu was also taken unawares by the announcement concerning the housing units as he claimed is questionable, particularly since he has apologized only for its timing, not its content and the offending minister remains unpunished. Netanyahu was surely cognizant that next week he will be coming to Washington to speak before AIPAC’s annual policy conference where he will find a greater degree of support than anywhere in his own country. Last year’s conference attracted a record 7,000 attendees plus half of the US Senate and a third of the House and it is likely to be ever larger this year in response to the administration’s perceived hostility to Israel.

Netanyahu will no doubt happily recall that before he met with President Obama for the first time last year, 76 US senators, led by Christopher Dodd and Evan Bayh, and 330 members of the House, sent AIPAC- crafted letters to the president calling on him not to put pressure on the Israeli prime minister when they met. The only report of this in the mainstream media was by a Washington post blogger who noted the AIPAC tagline on the pdf that was circulated among House members. Netanyahu will also be succored by memories of the House’s near unanimous support of Israel’s assault on Gaza and by its 334 to 36 vote condemning the Goldstone Report in its aftermath.

In addition, during last year’s Congressional summer recess, 55 members of the House, 30 Democrats led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and 25 Republicans, led by Eric Cantor, the House’s lone Jewish member, visited Jerusalem. Both groups met with Netanyahu and afterward held press conferences in which they expressed their solidarity with Israel, particularly with its claims on East Jerusalem, at a time when the Obama administration was calling for a settlement freeze. These visits, too, went unreported in the mainstream media.

Under the present circumstances, we can expect to see AIPAC extend every effort to make this year’s event the largest and more successful yet and there should be no doubt that those attending will give a far more rousing welcome to Netanyahu and to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is also on the AIPAC program, than to Secretary of State Clinton.

AIPAC is already posting statements on its website from members of Congress who are taking the Obama administration to task for making its differences with Israel public and for keeping the issue alive when the focus should not be on Jewish settlements but on the growing threat of a nuclear Iran which has been at the top of AIPAC’s agenda since the beginning of the Iraq War.

Nevertheless, given that the Democratic Party remains dependent on wealthy Jewish donors for the bulk of its major funding, estimated to be at least 60 per cent, and that this is an election year, we can expect Clinton to reach out and once again embrace Israel as she did at the 2008 AIPAC conference when, Biden-like, she said, “I have a bedrock commitment to Israel's security, because Israel's security is critical to our security….ll parties must know we will always stand with Israel in its struggle for peace and security. Israel should know that the United States will never pressure her to make unilateral concessions or to impose a made-in-America solution.”

For those with short memories, here is a sampling of past humiliations of US presidents and secretaries of state at the hands of our loyal ally:

March, 1980, President Carter was forced to apologize after US UN representative Donald McHenry voted for a resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement policies in the occupied territories including East Jerusalem and which called on Israel to dismantle them. McHenry had replaced Andrew Young who was pressured to resign in 1979 after an Israeli newspaper revealed that he had held a secret meeting with a PLO representative which violated a US commitment to Israel and to the American Jewish community.

June, 1980 After Carter requested a halt to Jewish settlements and his Secretary of State, Edmund Muskie, called the Jewish settlements an obstacle to peace, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced plans to construct 10 new ones.

In December, 1981, 14 days after signing what was described as a memorandum of strategic understanding with the Reagan administration, Israel annexed the Golan Heights “which made it appear that the US either acquiesced in the move or else has absolutely no control over its own ally’s actions. In both cases the US looks bad….he has once again poked his ally, the source of all his most sophisticated weapons and one third of his budget in the eye.” (Lars Erik-Nelson)

In August, 1982, the day after Reagan requested that Ariel Sharon end the bombing of Beirut, Sharon responded by ordering bombing runs over the city at precisely 2:42 and 3:38 in the afternoon, the times coinciding with the two UN resolutions requiring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

In March, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker complained to Congress that “Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process.., I have been met with an announcement of new settlement activity… It substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring about a peace process, and creates quite a predicament.” In 1990, he had become so disgusted with Israel’s intransigence on the settlements that he publicly gave out the phone number of the White House switchboard and told the Israelis, "When you're serious about peace, call us."

In April 2002, after Pres. George W Bush demanded that Ariel Sharon pull Israeli forces out of Jenin, declaring “Enough is enough!,” he was besieged by a 100,000 emails from supporters of Israel, Jewish and Christian and accused by Bill Safire of choosing Yasser Arafat as a friend over Sharon and by George Will, of losing his “moral clarity.” Within days, a humiliated Bush was declaring Sharon “a man of peace” despite the fact that he had not withdrawn his troops from Jenin.

In January 2009, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly boasted that he had “shamed” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by getting President Bush to prevent her from voting for a Gaza cease-fire resolution at the last moment that she herself had worked on for several days with Arab and European diplomats at the United Nations.

Olmert bragged to an Israeli audience that he pulled Bush off a stage during a speech to take his call when he learned about the pending vote and demanded that the president intervene.

“I have no problem with what Olmert did,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Forward. “I think the mistake was to talk about it in public.”

That episode and Foxman’s comment may have summed up the history of US-Israel relations.

PLEASE HELP LITTLE AMAL FROM GAZA!

freepaliadmin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:41:00 GMT

BY: AVIGAIL ABARBANEL

Please watch the documentary ‘Children of Gaza’ by Jezza Neumann here. Then please visit http://childrenofgazafund.org/ to make a donation to help Amal who has been living with shrapnel in her brain since Israel’s attack just over a year ago.

A couple of nights ago I watched the documentary ‘Children of Gaza’ on Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’. The film was made by the award winning documentary maker Jezza Neumann. Since then I can’t get the face of Amal, one of the four children featured in the film, out of my head. Amal was wounded during Israel’s attack on Gaza just over a year ago. She was found under rubble and I understand that for a while she lay near the dead and mutilated bodies of her uncles, one of whom had his head split in two.

Since Israel’s attack over a year ago, Amal has been living with several pieces of shrapnel lodged in her head. She is suffering from frequent awful headaches and nosebleeds. This is in addition to the obvious psychological trauma that she has to live with. As a psychotherapist I have no idea how long it will take and if it will ever be possible for Amal to recover from the trauma she has been through, and what life will be like for her if the shrapnel can’t be taken out of her brain.

In the film it was explained that an Israeli charity arranged for Amal to see a neurosurgeon in Israel to see what could be done for her. I understood the necessity but I still don’t think it was appropriate to send Amal to Israel for treatment. Imagine what it must feel like for her. Amal knows perfectly well that Israel is responsible for what had happened to her, to her family and her community. Can you imagine what she must have felt when she was sent to an Israeli surgeon? That surgeon, good or not, is or was a solider in the same military force that has been hurting Amal’s people. To send her to someone like that is insensitive and macabre.

I was also absolutely appalled that despite receiving permission to go into Israel to be examined by the surgeon, Amal and her elderly grandmother were made to wait 7 hours outdoors to get permission to cross the border. This is just another example of the indignities that Israel puts the Palestinian people through on a daily basis. There was no real reason for the wait just like there is no reason to keep anyone waiting for hours at checkpoints every day. Jewish Israel does not think that the Palestinian people deserve to be treated with dignity.

But do not make the mistake of dismissing this as the random acts of a messy and dysfunctional third world style bureaucracy. Rather this is a deliberate and calculated campaign to humiliate the Palestinian people and break their spirit. Broken people stop resisting even when exposed to the worst abuses.

In its fight against the spirit of Palestinian resistance Jewish Israel does not distinguish between the very young, the infirm, the able-bodied or the elderly. Every human spirit can inspire resistance. The inspiration and motivation to resist can come from your elderly grandmother just as much as your ten-year-old niece or newborn baby. Every single person with an aspiration for freedom is a threat to an occupier and oppressor. This is why Israeli soldiers can murder young children in their parents’ arms. They don’t distinguish between freedom fighters and ordinary people. This is the reason behind Israel’s persistent policy of collective punishment. It’s also why there is an international law against it. It’s because occupying powers and oppressors have always viewed the whole group as a threat, not just the designated freedom fighters.

The lack of compassion and humanity on Israel’s part is staggering and frankly I have had just enough of this. I don’t believe that a Jewish Israeli child or soldier with a brain injury would have been treated as poorly as Amal was. What Israeli soldier would allow his grandmother to be treated the way Amal’s grandmother was?

Enough is enough! I can’t sit by any longer and watch this happen without doing something. I would like to see Amal flown to a country overseas with an adult family member to be examined and possibly operated on by a capable and caring surgeon who has nothing to do with Israel and who would be prepared to take on Amal’s case. I know this is likely to cost a lot and will be hard to organise, so I hope a group of us can get together to arrange this somehow. I have never done anything like this before and have no experience. But among the readers there are people with great organising, campaigning and fundraising skills and experience, people who have means, people who have influence and people who know people in key places.

I am asking you to join together to take on Amal’s cause, and help her and her family end this ongoing nightmare. It’s important that Amal’s family in Gaza is contacted so that they can be an integral part of any attempt to help her.

All the children of Gaza need help; all the people of Gaza need help. I would like to help everyone and the way to do this is to do everything possible to end the siege, open the borders and ultimately end the occupation of the Palestinian people. It is unacceptable that people should live the way the people in Gaza do. Jewish Israel cannot be trusted to end this nightmare out of the goodness of its heart. Israel is going very fast down the slippery slope of war crimes and human rights violations. Despite its relentless protest and cries of ‘poor me’, Jewish Israel is a morally bankrupt state that is rapidly losing the legitimacy it should never have had in the first place.

On the Channel 4 website Jezza Neumann, the director of ‘The Children of Gaza’ wrote a short piece (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/children-ofgaza-filmmakers-feature describing his experiences in Gaza. In it he mentions that if anyone wants to help any of the children featured in the film they should contact http://childrenofgazafund.org/ There you will be able to make a donation for one or more of the four children mentioned in the film. The site is hosted by True Vision Productions, which was “founded in 1995 by Brian Woods and Deborah Shipley to make international campaigning documentaries. A number of charities have grown out of the films [they have] made… The Foundation is for those viewers who SPECIFICALLY want to help the individuals featured in our films. Each film will have its own account, and donations to that account will be used solely in connection with helping the characters from that film.”

Please make a donation through the site but let’s see if we can do more than give money. Perhaps we can in some way support the True Vision foundation to offer the help that Amal and the other children need so urgently.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episodeguide/series-56/episode-1 The film

USA-IPA-Congress: Yes to Gravestones, No to Goldstone's

freepaliadmin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:08:00 GMT

cartoon by Khalil Bendib
BY: MOHAMED KHODR

The Proclamation Of An Independent Palestine: Long Live Palestine, Long live the Palestinians

To My Palestinian Brothers and Sisters in and out of Palestine:

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed". 
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's time to declare your Palestinian State independently of what Israel, America or the world will do. Israel can't do more than it's already done to you for 61 years. What are they going to do? Occupy you, imprison you, bomb you, murder your children, evict you from your homes and bulldoze them to rubble, destroy your schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques and churches; burn your olive farms, deprive you of food, water, and medicines, humiliate and beat you at checkpoints, constantly annex your land for illegal, violent, hate filled settlers; prevent you from praying at Al Aqsa mosque, ethnically cleanse you from Jerusalem, prevent you from visiting your families, deny you residency permits and employment, prevent you from performing Hajj (Pilgrimage to Mecca), dishonor your women, turn off your electricity, use you as human shields—what more can they possibly do to you that they've not already done.

For 61 years you've had no one while living in camps, tents, and on handouts—not Arabs, Muslims, Europeans, Americans, Russians, Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, Australians, New Zealanders; no one has lifted a finger as you starve, die, and bleed as refugees in your homeland.

Each of you is responsible for the freedom of all. Enough words, useless U.N. Resolutions, lying negotiations, peace processes, and Arab and American lies. All have failed you, none more so than the Arabs and Muslims.

You want your freedom then you make it a reality by any means necessary.

Declare a State with East Jerusalem as your Capital and may the world go to hell.

God is with the oppressed. Trust Him and fight for your freedom. No one but God and yourselves can give you back your homeland. Seize the moment and the world's peoples will support you. Place your trust in God.

USA-IPA-CONGRESS

"Practically every congressman and senator says his prayers to the Israel lobby–they have done an enormous job of corrupting the American democratic process."
–George Ball, former Under Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and author of "The Passionate Attachment", a critique of Israel's power on U.S. MidEast Policy and its political, economic, and moral cost to the United States.

"The Israeli Prime Minister has a lot more influence over the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East than he has in his own country."
– Former Congressman Paul Findley, in his book "They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby", p. 92.

"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate … somewhere around 80 percent of the senate of the United States is completely in support of Israel — of anything Israel wants…."
– Senator William Fulbright, Chairman Senate Foreign Relations Committee, October 7, 1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation".

"You can't have an Israel policy other than what A.I.P.A.C. gives you around here," Hollings said. "I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor president a chance."
–Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Speech on Senate Floor, May 20, 2004 (prior to his retirement after serving 39 years in the Senate)

"The political reality is that the Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people up here (Congress)".
–Senator Chuck Hagel in an interview appearing on Ambassador Aaron Miller's website

"My number one priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel." 
–*** Armey, former House Majority Leader (1995 – 2003)

"I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die (If Iraq attacks Israel)."
–President Bill Clinton, speaking at a Toronto Jewish Fund Raiser, July 30, 2002 (thestar.com)

"Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable . . . Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us . . . as president I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security."
–Candidate Barack Obama, June 2008 at the AIPAC Conference

Uri Avnery, former Israeli soldier and Member of Knesset, in his article on Counterpunch, "The Coronation Viewed from Israel. King George", January 24, 2005 wrote.

"Some people say, only half in jest, that the USA is an Israeli colony. And indeed, in many respects it looks like that. President Bush dances to Ariel Sharon's tune. Both Houses of Congress are totally subservient to the Israeli right-wing much more so than the Knesset. It has been said that if the pro-Israeli lobby were to sponsor a resolution on Capitol Hill calling for the abolition of the Ten Commandments, both Houses of Congress would adopt it overwhelmingly. Every year Congress confirms the payment of a massive tribute to Israel."

Israel "is why I went on the Foreign Affairs Committee….And on this particular issue, the single most important thing is to maintain the high level of Congressional support because they become a brake on– they become a force on what the Administration does."
–Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), Future Chair of House Foreign Relations Committee, after the death of the Premier Zionist in Congress, Rep. Tom Lantos, February 22, 2008

"The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever."
–Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Future Speaker of the House at AIPAC Annual Conference, 5/24/05

Office of the Speaker of the House:

Overheard at a meeting at the Speaker of the House's office with Democratic and Republican Congressional Leaders.

Speaker of the House:
"I called you today to discuss several important domestic issues on our agenda that we need to address as soon as possible. You all know the state of our economy, our astronomical debt and huge budget and trade deficits, the highest unemployment rate in decades, bank failures, home foreclosures, the ever rising number of the uninsured, especially children, the widespread and increasing hunger rates, homelessness, our deteriorating school systems, crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, local budget cuts that result in less fire, police, and ambulance services, an almost bankrupt Social Security and Medicare system, funding Health Reform, Climate Change, and two ongoing g wars, that is if we're not pushed to bomb Iran and so much more. Now the President after his Afghan speech wants us to come up with $30 Billion to fund his surge.

I don't know where to begin or how on earth can we fund any of these issues when our economy is still shattered and our debt is exploding. I need some ideas on prioritizing and funding some of these domestic issues.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door:

The Speaker's aide opened the door and suddenly you can hear a pin drop on the floor.

The Speaker got up with a forced smile, running and sweating toward the door to meet this woman they all knew too well.

"What can I do for you?; the Speaker muttered.

The woman without speaking a word handed her one sheet of paper and left. The Speaker glanced at the paper and knew right away it demanded immediate attention.

"What is it Madame Speaker?", one asked.

"It's a letter from the man above my office demanding an immediate House Resolution that condemns the Goldstone Report along with an immediate transfer of $30 Billion to Israel's Central Bank. Well; what are you waiting for", She said with a crumbling voice.

Sure enough, by four p.m., the harshly worded Resolution was passed with the usual large bipartisan margin of 334 – 36 votes, and 22 abstentions. Only Israel can ensure bipartisanship in Congress.

The Resolution found the report, "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy", and demanded that Obama and Clinton, "oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration".

The Speaker ran up the stairs to the man and proudly delivered the passed Resolution and the successful transfer of the $30 Billion to Israel (she reminded herself that this was the money meant to support the troops as they head to Afghanistan. She wondered how many will die because the funds went to Israel and not to them, but she comforted herself that the White House would understand the "directions" she received from the man).

The man looked over the Resolution quietly and then lifted his eyes and said; "I want the names of those who voted no and abstained."

The Speaker humbly said that these men and women generally support Israel and she needs to keep the democrats to have a majority. She humbly reminded him that on March 5, 2008 the House defended Israel against Hamas during an episode of violence that killed over 100 Palestinians and 3 Israelis. She said the resolution passed by a vote of 404 – 1, so you see these men and women usually support Israel, I don't know why they didn't vote yes this time.

'Remind me who the sole person who voted no on that resolution", he demanded with anger.

"It was Rep. Ron Paul, republican from Texas, but he always goes his own way." She said hoping this meeting was over.

He stared her down and she quickly relented. "Yes, Sir, I'll have them on your desk tomorrow."

"I'd like to tell members that it's not just the House that's aligned with you but that the Senate is as well. Can you tell me what they've done lately in such regard?

"Yes," he answered, "76 Senators signed a letter I gave them to send to Obama to support Netanyahu and Israel. It's less then the usual 85 to 95 votes but I'll take it.'

He then added, "And by the way, just to let you know, the White House has dropped the stupid silly demand that Israel freeze its settlements."

He called in his Secretary and gave her the list of the Congressmen who dared not vote for his Resolution.
"Send this to our media across the country from the Networks, to the radio stations, newspapers, and pundits; they'll know what to do."

At the end of the day he left his office and headed to the Senate and House Chambers. Taking his keys out he locked the doors of both chambers. He then let out a loud kosher laugh at how the little Jewish state can kick the behind of the world's sole superpower. Such ignorant cowardly fools, he thought to himself.

Another day in the life of the USA-IPA-CONGRESS. A nation and government under Israel, not God.

No one in the White House, Senate, House, or Media ever read the entire 575 pages of the Goldstone Report. Why bother with facts and truth when it comes to Israel.

So what is the Goldstone Report?

The Goldstone Report:
Issued by the UNCHR Commission led by the renowned South African Jurist Richard Goldstone (Jewish).

On September 15, 2009, Judge Richard Goldstone and his Commission presented their 575-page Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict to its mandating authority, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Excerpt:

The United Nations fact-finding mission on Israel's 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009 found evidence that Israeli forces committed serious war crimes and breaches of humanitarian law.

"We came to the conclusion, on the basis of the facts we found, that there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza".

"The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF)."

On October 16, 2009 the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the Goldstone Report, with a 25 – 6 vote with 16 abstentions. The US automatically opposed the resolution while Britain and France abstained.

On November 5, 2009 the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of the resolution endorsing the Goldstone Report with a 114 – 8 vote (obviously Israel and U.S. voted no), with 44 member Abstentions.

The President of the General Assembly called the vote, "an important declaration against impunity. It is a call for justice and accountability…Without justice, there can be no progress towards peace. A human being should be treated as a human being, regardless of his or her religion, race or nationality,"

Human Rights Organizations around the world praised and supported the findings of the Goldstone Report including Amnesty International which issued this statement: "UN vote on Goldstone report a defining step for accountability," November 6, 2009,

Israel was predictably outraged rejecting the resolution of the U.N. General Assembly and in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor described the report as "completely detached from realities",

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, described the Goldstone Report as "conceived in hate and executed in sin". (Haaretz 11/4/09).

The White House also adopted Israel's rejection of the Goldstone Report prompting Judge Goldstone to state: "The U.S. does not have to support Israel blindly".

Israel's 22 day Genocide on Gaza: The Aftermath

1417 dead, including 320 children and 109 women, 5300 injured (many seriously), 1606 were children; the far majority of the dead and injured were civilians, 60 of those killed were infants and children under the age of five. (According to B'tselem: 9 Israelis died: 6 were soldiers–some killed by friendly fire-and 3 civilians)

2000 – 2200: Number of Children Orphaned
52,000 homes destroyed
100,000 Gazans left Homeless
90% of Gazans depend totally on Food Aid
34: Number of Hospitals and Clinics destroyed or damaged
214: Number of Schools (including U.N. Schools) destroyed or damaged.
52: Number of Mosques and Churches destroyed or damaged.
25,000 – 50,000: Gazans suffering long term psychological damage (W.H.O.)

"The vast majority of the Palestinians killed in Israel's operation in the Gaza Strip last winter were innocent civilians rather than combatants, according to a new report to be published by the B'Tselem organization Wednesday morning. This is the opposite of what the Israel Defense Forces have said."
–Haaretz, "Rights group: Most Gazans killed in war were civilians", 9/9/09

The Israeli Human Rights Organization, B'Tselem's report on Israel's genocide upon Gaza sought to emphasize that "behind the dry statistics lie shocking individual stories. Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated." (September 9, 2009)

Let's take a look at a few Congressional Bills and Resolutions adopted by AIPAC's Congress comparing those dealing with Israel, ALL PRAISE, and those dealing with Muslim nations, ALL CONDEMNATION.

Bills/Resolutions Passed by House of Representatives Only During Years: 2003 2009 (105th – 111th)
1906 Bills/Resolutions Praising Israel. 3386 Bills/Resolutions condemning just 6 Muslim Nations

Thus there can only be one conclusion:

"The Arabs are right when they paint America as a great Zionist conspiracy"
–Doughlas Rushkoff, Professor New York University
In "Wrestling with Zion" (Grove Press, 2003)

Pity the American and Muslim peoples who despite their obvious differences live in similar political, economic, military and social environments. Both are ruled by powerful wealthy elites whose priority is to generate self wealth and ensure that the world is stable for doing business regardless if such nations are run by dictators, autocrats, communists, socialists, atheists, black, white, yellow, or brown. Both are dumbed down by an overwhelming pro-government pro-business media owned by the few who ensure a compliant unthinking population. Like sheep, both societies follow the shepherd called television in thought and deed. Both are demoralized, alienated, and detached from their political system, with one difference, Americans think they have a democratic vote and Muslims know they don't but the end result is the same-an Oligarchy: Money is the sole foundation of all things and of the so called "national interest" of a nation.

Historians will for centuries argue over how a small nation like Israel, a nation transformed from former slaves to modern day masters, was powerful and able enough to manipulate an entire world to be mindful, sensitive, and compliant to its psyche and will.

In total ignorance, Americans are complicit with Israel's atrocities given that Israel's killing machine is paid for by these hapless taxpayers.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever".
–President Thomas Jefferson

Some quotes on Israel Militarism, Terrorism, and the Power of its U.S. Lobby, primarily AIPAC.

"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights…in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport,"
–Chris Hedges, The Nation, March 11, 2002

"Jews must learn to say without excuse, without equivocation, despite our history and our powerlessness in the past, despite all the injustices that we have endured-today, now, the Palestinians are the victims of oppression, and their oppressors are the Israelis." 
– Irena Klepfisz, (Bartleby.com)

"Since 1967, millions of Palestinians have been under a military occupation, without any civil rights, and most lacking even the most basic human rights. The continuing circumstances of occupation and repression give them, by any measure, the right to resist that occupation with any means at their disposal and to rise up in violence against that occupation. This is a moral right inherent to natural law and international law. Even today, most of the public simply does not know that every violent step taken against the Palestinians – let alone the aggregate of those steps – borders on war crimes…. A state that regards itself as enlightened cannot behave like a terror-state, even if it suffers from terrorism."
–Professor Baruch Kimmerling, Haaretz, "The Right To Resist", March 27, 2001

The front jacket of the book "Jewish Power" states:
"..a frank look at Jewish power and influence in America today…a rare insider's portrait of the people, the institutions, the money, and the ideas that make up Jewish political influence in the U.S., from the Anti-Defamation League to the United Jewish Appeal, to the New York Times, to the…Jewish caucus in the House of Representatives…He details the absolutely vital role Jews play in Democratic party politics and fund raising. He describes the inner workings of the feared pro-Israel lobby….and its surprising role in shaping American foreign policy. He tackles……Jewish media influence."
–J. J. Goldberg, "Jewish Power", 1996: Addison-Wesley Publications, Co., Inc.

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews. [Former Secretary of State George] Marshall and [former Defense Secretary James] Forestall learned that….. Terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen…. I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"
–Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in February 1957 quoted in Donald Neff's "Fallen Pillars", page 99.

"We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own"
–Ari Shavat. New York Times, May 27, 1999 (Referring to the 1996 Israeli massacre of over 100 Lebanese civilians seeking protection at a U.N. compound in Qana, Lebanon. The U.N. condemnation of this attack led the U.S. to defeat the re-election of Butros Butros Ghali as U.N. Secretary General)

"In the world according to U.S. media, the high moral ground in the Middle East belongs to Israel's government…In news coverage; Israeli casualties are apt to have names, faces and bereaved relatives, while Arab victims are likely to be fleeting images: nameless, faceless, distant. Israel's most crucial allies include the mass media of the United States. Together with top officials in Washington, news outlets keep reinforcing the assumption that the Israeli government can do little wrong. Vigorous debate about Israeli policies, however, is not on the media agenda…For decades, strong critics of Israel have encountered charges of Anti-Semitism. The constant threat of the accusation has a chilling effect on debate. But, sadly, there's not much to chill. Even when the lives of children hang in the balance, the U.S. media debate about Israel seems to ends before it begins."
–Normon Solomon and Jeff Cohen, "The Wizard of Oz", pg. 243 – 246

"Israel, world's biggest threat to world peace!"
The headlines blared across Europe when the "Eurobarometer" poll conducted in 15 E.U. nations, done by the European Commission was released. It reported that more than 59% of EU citizens see Israel as a threat to the world.
–AFP-Reuter-Agencies, Brussels, Nov. 2003.

"The politics and policies of the so-called "state of Israel" should play no part in governing the United States or in our upcoming elections. Rather, the focus should be on the needs of the American people. Jews in the United States are USA Citizens and are as concerned with improving the lives of the people of the USA as any other American citizen….The politicians who continue expound on supporting the "state of Israel are trying to bolster their campaigns and popularity, thinking that this will sway the Jewish vote."
–Rabbi Joseph Dershowitz, "Keep Israel Out of American Politics", May 7, 2004 (TrueTorahJews.org)

Sources:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf
Entire Goldstone Report

http://www.ziomania.com/holocaust/holocaust.htm
Graphic Photos of Victims of Israel's Genocide upon Gaza

http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jps.2009.XXXVIII.3.210?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jps
Total Assessment of Gazans killed, injured, homes destroyed, plus other vital stats.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/list.pdf
The Actual List of Names, Ages, and Occupation of Casualties of Operation Cast Lead

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1113402.html
"Rights group: Most Gazans killed in war were civilians", 9/9/09

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3774217,00.html
"B'Tselem: 773 of Palestinians killed in Cast Lead were civilians", only 330 were combatants, 9/9/09

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133349
"B'Tselem Backs Hamas Casualty Report", 12/5/09

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/multicongress/multicongress.html
Government Site for All Congressional Bills/Resolutions and Actions.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/Pelosi_AIPAC_Speech.html
Nancy Pelosi Speech to American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]
Text of Remarks, 5/24/05

http://mondoweiss.net/2008/02/foreign-affairs.html#high_4
Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), Future Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee; 2/22/08

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126213.html
"Israel" UN "detached from reality" for adopting Goldstone Report, 116/09

http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/2009/11/zionists-investigatedtoday-is-day.html
UK Channel 4 Investigates the Power of Israel Lobby in England

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127942.html
Goldstone: "U.S. does not have to protect Israel blindly", 11/13/09

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127198.html
"French FM: It seems Israel no longer wants peace" By Reuters, 10/11/09

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery01242005.html
Uri Avnery, "The Coronation Viewed from Israel. King George", January 24. 2005

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/10/freeman_speaks_out_on_his_exit
–Ambassador's Charles Freeman's Letter of Resignation after a horrific smearing attack by the Israel Lobby and its subservient Congress. In his letter Ambassador Freeman wrote:
"The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors." March 10, 2009

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11334&pageid=17&pagename=News
76 Senators Sign AIPAC letter to President Obama urging him to support Israel in its negotiations.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/15/gop-democratic-leader-inadvertently-expose-israeli-lobbyists-behind-their-letter-to-obama/
Inadvertent Leak of AIPAC letter adopted by Congress
A letter from Congressional leaders Rep's Steny Hoyer and Eric Cantor sent to President Obama urging him to support Israel during upcoming negotiations was leaked to the media. The leaked document was titled, "AIPAC Letter Hoyer-Cantor May 2009.pdf", thereby proving that AIPAC runs the show and that Congress unquestionably and in Pavlovian fashion adopt AIPAC's agenda.

http://wrmea.com/archives/May-June_2009/paccharts_32-37.pdf 2008
Pro Israel Pac Contributions to Congressional Members

Recommended Books:

"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", Prof. Ilan Pappe
"What Price Israel?" by Dr. Alfred L. Lilenthal
"Bad News from Israel", Greg Philo and Mike Derry, Glasgow University Media Group, Pluto Press, 2004
"One Nation Under Israel" by Andrew Hurley
"The Question of Palestine" by Edward Said
"Jewish Power", by J. J. Goldberg
"Fifty Years of Israel", by Donald Neff
"The Arabs: Myth and Reality", by George Butt
"Original Sins", by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
"The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited", by Benny Morris
"The Holocaust Industry", by Norman G. Finkelstein
"The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History", by Keith W. Whitelam
"The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World", by Avi Shlaim
"The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present", by George W. Ball
"They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby", by Paul Findley
"It's the Media, Stupid", by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
"Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years" by Prof. Israel Shahak
"Assault on the Liberty" by James M. Ennes, Jr.

NOAM CHOMSKY-NO CHANGE IN US 'MAFIA PRINCIPLE'

freepaliadmin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:44:00 GMT

BY: MAMOON ALABASSI

Top American intellectual sees no significant change of US foreign policy under Obama.

As civilised people across the world breathed a sigh of relief to see the back of former US president George W. Bush, top American intellectual Noam Chomsky warned against assuming or expecting significant changes in the basis of Washington's foreign policy under President Barack Obama.

During two lectures organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Chomsky cited numerous examples of the driving doctrines behind US foreign policy since the end of World War II.

"As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," said Chomsky.

"But it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric. Deeds commonly tell a different story," he added.

"There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that we if can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," explained Chomsky.

Chomsky said that a leading doctrine of US foreign policy during the period of its global dominance is what he termed as "the Mafia principle."

"The Godfather does not tolerate 'successful defiance'. It is too dangerous. It must therefore be stamped out so that others understand that disobedience is not an option," said Chomsky.

Because the US sees "successful defiance" of Washington as a "virus" that will "spread contagion," he explained.

Iran

The US had feared this "virus" of independent thought from Washington by Tehran and therefore acted to overthrow the Iranian parliamentary democracy in 1953.

"The goal in 1953 was to retain control of Iranian resources," said Chomsky.

However, "in 1979 the (Iranian) virus emerged again. The US at first sought to sponsor a military coup; when that failed, it turned to support Saddam Hussein's merciless invasion (of Iran)."

"The torture of Iran continued without a break and still does, with sanctions and other means," said Chomsky.

"The US continued, without a break, its torture of Iranians," he stressed.

Nuclear attack

Chomsky mocked the idea presented by mainstream media that a future-nuclear-armed Iran may attack already-nuclear-armed Israel.

"The chance of Iran launching a missile attack, nuclear or not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth — unless, of course, the ruling clerics have a fanatic death wish and want to see Iran instantly incinerated along with them," said Chomsky, stressing that this is not the case.

Chomsky further explained that the presence of US anti-missile weapons in Israel are really meant for preparing a possible attack on Iran, and not for self-defence, as it is often presented.

"The systems are advertised as defense against an Iranian attack. But …the purpose of the US interception systems, if they ever work, is to prevent any retaliation to a US or Israeli attack on Iran — that is, to eliminate any Iranian deterrent," said Chomsky.

Iraq

Chomsky reminded the audience of America's backing of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during and even after Iraq's war with Iran.

"The Reaganite love affair with Saddam did not end after the (Iran-Iraq) war. In 1989, Iraqi nuclear engineers were invited to the United States, then under Gorge Bush I, to receive advanced weapons' training," said Chomsky.

This support continued while Saddam was committing atrocities against his own people, until he fell out of US favour when in 1990 he invaded Kuwait, an even closer alley of Washington.

"In 1990, Saddam defied, or more likely misunderstood orders, and he quickly shifted from favourite friend to the reincarnation of Hitler," Chomsky added.

Then the people of Iraq were subjected to "genocidal" US-backed sanctions.

Chomsky explained that although the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was launched under many false pretexts and lies, was a " major crime", many critics of the invasion – including Obama – viewed it as merely as "a mistake" or a "strategic blunder".

"It's probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad," he said

"There's nothing principled about it. It wasn't a strategic blunder: it was a major crime," he added.

Chomsky credited the holding of elections in Iraq in 2005 to popular Iraqi demand, despite initial US objection.

The US military, he argued, could kill as many Iraqi insurgents as it wished, but it was more difficult to shoot at non-violent protesters in the streets out on the open, which meant Washington at times had to give in to public Iraqi pressure.

But despite being pressured to announce a withdrawal from Iraq, the US continues to seek a long term presence in the country.

The US mega-embassy in Baghdad is to be expanded under Obama, noted Chomsky.

Optimism

Chomsky stressed that public pressure in the 'West' can make a positive difference for people suffering from the aggression of 'Western' governments.

"There is a lot of comparison between opposition to the Iraq war with opposition to the Vietnam war, but people tend to forget that at first there was almost no opposition to the Vietnam war," said Chomsky.

"In the Iraq war, there were massive international protests before it officially stated… and it had an effect. The United Sates could not use the tactics used in Vietnam: there was no saturation bombing by B52s, so there was no chemical warfare – (the Iraq war was) horrible enough, but it could have been a lot worse," he said.

"And furthermore, the Bush administration had to back down on its war aims, step by step," he added.

"It had to allow elections, which it did not want to do: mainly a victory for non-Iraqi protests. They could kill insurgents; they couldn't deal hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Their hands were tied by the domestic constraints. They finally had to abandon – officially at least – virtually all the war aims," said Chomsky.

"As late as November 2007, the US was still insisting that the 'Status of Forces Agreement' allow for an indefinite US military presence and privileged access to Iraq's resources by US investors – well they didn't get that on paper at least. They had to back down. OK, Iraq is a horror story but it could have been a lot worse," he said.

"So yes, protests can do something. When there is no protest and no attention, a power just goes wild, just like in Cambodia and northern Laos," he added.

Turkey

Chomsky said that Turkey could become a "significant independent actor" in the region, if it chooses to.

"Turkey has to make some internal decisions: is it going to face west and try to get accepted by the European Union or is it going to face reality and recognise that Europeans are so racist that they are never going to allow it in?," said Chomsky.

The Europeans "keep raising the barrier on Turkish entry to the EU," he explained.

But Chomsky said Turkey did become an independent actor in March 2003 when it followed its public opinion and did not take part in the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Turkey took notice of the wishes of the overwhelming majority of its population, which opposed the invasion.

But 'New Europe' was led by Berlusconi of Italy and Aznar of Spain, who rejected the views of their populations – which strongly objected to the Iraq war – and preferred to follow Bush, noted Chomsky.

So, in that sense Turkey was more democratic than states that took part in the war, which in turn infuriated the US.

Today, Chomsky added, Turkey is also acting independently by refusing to take part in the US-Israeli military exercises.

Fear factor

Chomsky explained that although 'Western' government use "the maxim of Thucydides" ('the strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer as they must'), their peoples are hurled via the "fear factor".

Via cooperate media and complicit intellectuals, the public is led to believe that all the crimes and atrocities committed by their governments is either "self defence" or "humanitarian intervention".

NATO

Chomsky noted that Obama has escalated Bush's war in Afghanistan, using NATO.

NATO is also seen as reinforcing US control over energy supplies.

But the US also used NATO to keep Europe under control.

"From the earliest post-World War days, it was understood that Western Europe might choose to follow an independent course," said Chomsky, "NATO was partially intended to counter this serious threat," he added.

Middle East oil

Chomsky explained that Middle East oil reserves were understood to be "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "one of the greatest material prizes in world history," the most "strategically important area in the world," in Eisenhower's words.

Control of Middle East oil would provide the United States with "substantial control of the world."

This meant that the US "must support harsh and brutal regimes and block democracy and development" in the Middle East.

Somalia

Chomsky tackled the origins of the Somali piracy issue.

"Piracy is not nice, but where did it come from?"

Chomsky explained that one of the immediate reasons for piracy is European counties and others are simply "destroying Somalia's territorial waters by dumping toxic waste – probably nuclear waste – and also by overfishing."

"What happens to the fishermen in Somalia? They become pirates. And then we're all upset about the piracy, not about having created the situation," said Chomsky.

Chomsky went on to cite another example of harming Somalia.

"One of the great achievements of the war on terror, which was greatly hailed in the press when it was announced, was closing down an Islamic charity – Barakat – which was identified as supporting terrorists.

"A couple of months later… the (US) government quietly recognised that they were wrong, and the press may have had a couple of lines about it – but meanwhile, it was a major blow against Somalia. Somalia doesn't have much of an economy but a lot of it was supported by this charity: not just giving money but running banks and businesses, and so on.

"It was a significant part of the economy of Somalia…closing it down… was another contributing factor to the breaking down of a very weak society…and there are other examples."

Darfur

Chomsky also touched on Sudan's Darfur region.

"There are terrible things going on in Darfur, but in comparison with the region they don't amount to a lot unfortunately – like what's going on in eastern Congo is incomparably worse than in Darfur.

"But Darfur is a very popular topic for Western humanists because you can blame it on an enemy – you have to distort a lot but you can blame it on 'Arabs', 'bad guys'," he explained.

"What about saving eastern Congo where maybe 20 times as many people have been killed? Well, that gets kind of tricky … for people who… are using minerals from eastern Congo that obtained by multinationals sponsoring militias which slaughter and kill and get the minerals," he said.

Or the fact that Rwanda is simply the worst of the many agents and it is a US alley, he added.

Goldstone's Gaza report

Chomsky appeared to have agreed with Israel that the Goldstone report on the Gaza war was bias, only he saw it as biased in favour of Israel.

The Goldstone report had acknowledged Israel's right to self-defence, although it denounced the method this was conducted.

Chomsky stressed that the right to self-defence does not mean resorting to military force before "exhausting peaceful means", something Israel did not even contemplate doing.

In fact, Chomsky points out, it was Israel who broke the ceasefire with Hamas and refused to extend it, as continuing the siege of Gaza itself is an act of war.

As for the current stalled Mideast peace process, Chomsky said that despite adopting a tougher tone towards Israel than that of Bush, Obama made no real effort to pressure Israel to live up to its obligations.

In the absence of the threat of cutting US aid for Israel, there is no compelling reason why Tel Aviv should listen to Washington.

What can be done?

Chomsky stressed that despite all the obstacles, public pressure can and does make a difference for the better, urging people to continue activism and spreading knowledge.

"There is no reason to be pessimistic, just realistic."

Chomsky noted that public opinion in the US and Britain is increasingly becoming more aware of the crimes committed by Israel.

"Public opinion is shifting substantially."

And this is where a difference can be made, because Israel will not change its policies without pressure from the 'West'.

"There is a lot to do in Western countries…primarily in the US."

Chomsky also stressed the importance of taking legal action in 'Western' countries against companies breaking international law via illegitimate dealings with Israel, citing the possible involvement of British Gas in Israeli theft of natural gas off the coast of Gaza, as one example that should be investigated.

In conclusion of one of the lectures, Chomsky quoted Antonio Gramsci who famously called for "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."

GIVE UP ON OBAMA, DISBAND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

freepaliadmin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:39:00 GMT

BY: SAMI JAMIL JADALLAH

The issue of continuing and expanding Jewish settlements came back to haunt the Palestinian leadership that negotiated Oslo and continued to negotiate with Israel for the last 16 years while Israeli continued to build and expand its settlements, not to mention building the Apartheid Wall.

Now 16 years later finally the Palestinian leadership discovered there is a problem with the Jewish settlements. One has to wonder why did Arafat continue to negotiate with Israel while Israeli continued with its settlement program? And why did Abbas continue to negotiate with Netanyahu predecessor Olmert while Olmert continued with his settlement program not to mention his on War on Gaza?

There is something fundamentally wrong with this Palestinian leadership that accepted, and for so long, Israel’s settlements policy that saw settlements expand 150% since Oslo, while we hear nothing but lip service and denunciation from Ramallah, while it continues to deal with Israel business as usual.

Of course we do understand this leadership that lead the Palestinian people from one failure to another, from one disaster to another continues to proceed with its Oslo policies even though those policies simply failed to make a difference for the millions under occupation. Of course Oslo made a big and substantial difference to the leadership and its army of do-nothing functionaries.

The statement of Hillary Clinton that Israel made “unprecedented concessions” on the issue of settlements should be a red flag for the Palestinian leadership that America under Barack Obama is no different from America under George Bush and that peace in the Middle East is not an international issue but strictly a domestic issue. The Palestinian leadership has to come to terms with and has to understand that the powerful American Jewish leadership and community will never, ever allow any US president to proceed and make serious efforts in making peace possible in the Middle East. Peace is never in the interest of this leadership and community.

The shifting sands are not in the Middle East, the shifting sands are in Washington, with President Barack Obama under tremendous domestic pressure from the American Jewish leadership and community to simply give up on his commitments to make peace possible. Instead this leadership and community wants and is demanding President Barack Obama manage the conflict but not solve it. Hence the backtracking on the issue of settlements as illegal and obstacle to peace.

Of course Bibi Netanyahu is challenging the Palestinian leadership to start the negotiations without pre-conditions and as he stated “the Palestinians have been negotiating for the last 16 years while Israel was building the settlements why stop negotiating now?" And yes, perhaps Bibi Netanyahu is correct; why stop negotiating now? This is the question the Palestinian leadership must answer and now.

If the Palestinians and the leadership are counting on the US and the Obama administration to deliver peace or deliver Israel to withdraw and ends its occupation they better think twice. Now and for the foreseeable future there is no US president who can muster the courage to stand up to the powerful, vengeful and harmful American Jewish leadership and community. Peace for Israel, peace in the Middle East, ending the longest occupation in modern times will undermine the power and influence of this leadership and community, and its is not about to give all that up, even it means tens of thousands of lives are lost on both sides.

Now the Palestinian leadership has to understand that the people are fed with a dialed and inept leadership, fed up with the same excuses, fed up with everything that comes out of Ramallah and for that matter out of Gaza or Damascus. The people are fed up with the Oslo Team continuing to manage the Jewish Occupation as if there are no expanding settlements, as if there are no demolition of homes, as if there is no Apartheid Wall, as if there is no ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem, as if there are no 650 security checkpoints and expanding, as if there are no targeted assassinations. The people are fed with up the Ramallah negotiation team, fed up with Hamas stupid rockets and claims of effective armed resistance, fed up with Hamas, with Fatah and fed up with the PLO and the same leadership that failed them for so long. The Oslo Team that managed the Jewish Occupation since Oslo must close shop and close today before tomorrow.

We all know this is rather a difficult decision to make, not because it is the right thing to do, or because it is in the best interest of the people, no, because such a decision to close down Oslo Shop has so much implication for the rights, benefits privileges and personal financial interest of a leadership and a team that are direct beneficiaries of the continuing Jewish Occupation. Oslo was a bonanza.

Senior members will have to give up very expensive multi-million dollar villas, give up fleet of cars for them and members of their families, give up all the personal security guards and armed escorts, give up their Israeli issued VIP cards, give up on evenings in posh Tel-Aviv restaurants and night clubs, give up on business interests with the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Occupations. They simply have to give up salaries and benefits in the 6 digits figures. They have to give up all of this. Of course, tens of thousands of Fatah members also have to give up salaries paid directly by the PA since it is doubtful if Israel will keep them on its payroll. Members of Hamas will also have to give up similar privileges if Oslo closes shop.

There is no other choice but to disband the Palestinian Authority and to call Oslo null and void since Israel never had any intention to give up the Occupation, give up on settlements and was only interested in a Palestinian partner that can manage the Occupation but not deliver on ending the Occupation. The Road Map was a dead end to start with designed to allow Israel to continue with its Occupation. The Palestinian Authority and the PLO must stop being the manager of the Jewish Occupation and must stop begging for funds to fund the Jewish Occupation; time to let Israel pay for its own occupation.

Mahmoud Abbas should take the first flight to New York and demand to speak before the UN General Assembly and there and then announce the disbanding of the Palestinian Authority and asking the United Nations to take over managing the Jewish Occupation from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization. That step will make ending the Jewish Occupation not an American domestic issue but an international issue as well. The US and especially the Obama administration must then make up its mind whether it wants to manage the conflict to appease the powerful American Jewish leadership and community or it wants to end this conflict and do what is right, the only right thing to do, ending the Jewish Occupation that lasted for some 43 years. The Arabs also have a right to know where the Obama administration stands on ending the Jewish Occupation.

NUKE GAZA

freepaliadmin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:39:00 GMT

BY: JEFF GATES

Israeli officials are right to worry. Gazans too. Yet Americans should worry even more.

Israel's "legitimacy" will not last. Of course, that assumes its legitimacy was deserved. That issue also is now called into question in light of the consistency of Israeli behavior over the past six decades. The emerging issues are these:

When and how will the recognition of Israel's nation-state status be withdrawn? How will Tel Aviv behave in the interim?

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman may have tipped his Masada hand when he reportedly told Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Israel may use nuclear weapons against Gaza. The threat to Israel is not the 1.5 million Gazans who reside in the world's largest open-air prison.

The threat is the fast-growing global outrage at the abuse inflicted on Palestinians, commencing with the ethnic cleansing of 400-plus villages six decades ago.

Not since 1948 has this enclave of extremists mounted such a public relations offensive. Christian Zionist President Harry Truman trusted Jewish Zionist lobbyists when he solicited assurances that they would not become what they immediately became: a racist theocratic state with an expansionist agenda destined to create serial crises in the region.

The merciless global agenda pursued by Colonial Zionists is the single greatest threat to world peace, as confirmed yet again by Lieberman's warning. As the primary remaining ally of these Jewish nationalists, the risks to the U.S. increase with each passing day as Tel Aviv works behind the scenes to catalyze yet another conflict.

This entangled alliance was destined to provoke resentments that would eventually endanger their super power ally and foremost arms provider. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the mass murder of 9-11, conceded that the motivation for that attack was to focus "the American people…on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people and America's self-serving foreign policy that corrupts Arab governments and leads to further exploitation of the Arab Muslim people."

The Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Truman 61 years ago that this militant enclave meant to establish Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East. Familiar with the duplicity for which Israel has since become infamous, the Pentagon chiefs warned: "All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders."

Nuclear-Armed Fanatics

With each passing year, Tel Aviv adds a new chapter to the agent provocateur handbook on How To Succeed as a Victim.

Israel's strategic success traces directly to its capacity to radicalize and enrage-as those residing in the Occupied Territories endure a third generation of deprivation, degradation and periodic starvation. Thus the in-depth planning that preceded Israel's brutal "defensive" assault on Gaza between Christmas 2008 and the inauguration of Barack Obama-who said nothing about the attack throughout its 28-day duration.

That silence continues even now after Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist, issued a report describing dozens of Israeli war crimes and evidence of crimes against humanity. In the lead-up to the report's release, a U.S. president gave Tel Aviv a rhetorical gift when, in a U.N. speech, the nation's first Black president used the code phrase "Jewish state" as an implied endorsement of the apartheid policies of this racist enclave. Even Truman did not go that far. But then his administration was not as thoroughly staffed with Zionists and pro-Israelis.

In addition to killing some 1400 Palestinians, one-third of them women and children, Israel destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza including farmlands, factories and schools as well as its water supply and sanitation works. The facts in the Goldstone Report were further confirmed by "Breaking the Silence"-the personal testimony by thirty members of the Israel Defense Forces who described a murderous policy meant to teach the people of Gaza a lesson for their support of Hamas-which came to power in 2006 elections that were universally appraised as free and fair.

As Israel's protector and apologist, the U.S. bears the brunt of the anger as Israeli extremism continues to enrage Muslims and radicalize the Islamic body politic. A systematic assassination campaign ensured that Tel Aviv had "no one to talk to" except known collaborators with the occupation authorities in Tel Aviv and their arms suppliers in Washington. Meanwhile, the steady expansion of Israeli settlements made a Palestinian state impossible-unless indigenous Arabs are happy to reside in an archipelago of isolated ghettos ringed by Israeli checkpoints.

To suggest that the U.S. is culpable only states the obvious. Yet Israeli extremism continues unabated even as Tel Aviv insists that its neighbors accept it as a "Jewish state" even before its borders are fixed and resolution of the occupied territories is known. After six decades of nonstop deceit, Arab states are understandably reluctant to further appease this "state." For Americans endangered by the behavior of Jewish fanatics, the lesson is uncomfortable but inescapable: we enabled this.

By our continued appeasement, Barack Obama is inviting another violent reaction to Israel's serial provocations. By failing to endorse the Goldstone Report, our commander-in-chief is putting U.S. forces at risk. By implying that Israel is above the law, he only emboldens Tel Aviv. By suggesting that Israeli conduct is consistent with the values of a "Jewish state," he endangers the broader Jewish community. That includes those moderate Jews who anticipated this extremist behavior when in May 1948 Truman overruled the strategic objections of Secretary of State George C. Marshall and enabled this fanaticism by extending nation-state recognition.

Small in numbers but large in ambition, this extremist enclave had no choice but to wage war by way of deception. The most insidious deceit was targeted, from within, at its purported ally to induce the U.S. military to lead an invasion of Iraq for its Greater Israel strategy. Absent an Israeli strategy able to sustain serial crises, a long-deceived public will awaken to the common source of the fixed intelligence that led us into the last war-and now seeks to induce the next.

As Americans awaken to how this duplicity proceeds in plain sight, they will see for themselves who and why. That knowledge is the threat that Tel Aviv most fears. As the facts become known, Israeli legitimacy will no longer be an issue. The only issue will be how best to dis-arm these extremists and how to hold accountable those lawmakers who enable this ongoing treason.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide; an adviser to policy-makers worldwide; former counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee; and author of numerous articles and books including his latest book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com

At What Cost the Israel Lobby?

freepaliadmin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:11:00 GMT

BY: JEFF GATES

More than 46 years ago, President John F. Kennedy sought to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 1963, he wrote the last in a series of insistent letters to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Those letters sought what Israel now demands of Iran: international inspections of its nuclear facilities. The key difference: Kennedy knew for certain that Israel, while portraying itself a friend and ally, repeatedly lied to Kennedy about its nuclear weapons development at the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert.

Best estimates point to sometime between 1962 and 1964 when Israel produced its first weapon in what is now a vast nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads. Kennedy’s letter to Ben-Gurion was anything but friendly. The words he chose were drawn not from diplomacy but from the instructions that a judge gives a jury on criminal culpability. In that brusque letter, the U.S. commander-in-chief insisted that this purported ally prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Zionist enclave was not developing nuclear weapons.

One day after that June 15th letter was cabled to Tel Aviv for delivery by the U.S. ambassador, Ben-Gurion abruptly resigned citing undisclosed personal reasons. As his resignation was announced before the letter could be physically delivered, Jewish authors routinely claim that Kennedy’s message failed to reach Ben-Gurion. Nonsense. That interpretative gloss ignores what we now know about Israeli operations inside serial U.S. presidencies—and about Tel Aviv’s routine intercept of White House communications.

Deprived of an Israeli government with which to negotiate, Kennedy was denied a national security victory that may well have spared the world a problem he foresaw almost a half-century ago. In retrospect, that Israeli conduct raises topical questions about the ability of the U.S.—or any nation—to hold Zionist extremists accountable.

The Khazars vs. the Kennedys

During this same 1962-63 period, Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, convened hearings on the legal status of the American Zionist Council. The AZC received funds from the Jewish Agency, a predecessor to the state of Israel. As a recipient of U.S. taxpayer funds, the Jewish Agency used those funds to lobby for more funds. Under U.S. law, that conduct required the AZC to register as a foreign agent.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy joined Fulbright in that quest. That effort was thwarted by the Israel lobby and then by the death of President Kennedy. Thereafter, concerns about the impact of Zionist influence on U.S. policy making continued to grow. By 1973, Fulbright could announce with confidence: “Israel controls the U.S. Senate.” In 1974, he lost his Senate seat. [See: “How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy.”]

Fast-forward to today and imagine the Middle East without an enclave of nuclear-armed Zionist extremists. The threat that Kennedy posed to Tel Aviv’s arsenal was eliminated five months after Ben-Gurion’s strategically well-timed resignation. When Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as his successor, LBJ quickly increased the arms budget for Israel. Imagine today’s Zionist influence on U.S. policy had Fulbright and the Kennedys succeeded in requiring that the lobby register as what it is: a foreign agent.

Following the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, Nicholas Katzenbach replaced RFK as Attorney General. Soon thereafter, the AZC evaded registration as it morphed into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC now oversees a transnational network of pro-Israeli political operatives commonly known as “the Israel lobby.”

The Kennedy/Fulbright risk to Zionist influence reemerged five years later when Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency during the height of an unpopular war that was vastly expanded under the leadership of the Texan who replaced his brother as president. Another Kennedy presidency posed for Tel Aviv a two-fold threat.

First, Robert Kennedy’s peace candidacy revived the possibility that he would pursue his brother’s agenda and target Israel’s nuclear arsenal in order to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Second, with Fulbright still wielding influence on U.S. foreign policy, a Kennedy administration revived concerns about restrictions on the Israel lobby.

When this charismatic contender surged in the political polls, that threat was eliminated June 5, 1968 at a campaign event in Los Angeles. His death at the hand of Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian émigré, coincided with the first anniversary of the Six-Day War. The assassin later cited as his motive Kennedy’s campaign pledge to provide more fighter jets to Israel.

With that murder, the road to the presidency was cleared for Richard Nixon. When lobbied by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Nixon readily agreed to endorse an “ambiguous” status for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, akin to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Special Standard for a Special Friend

Due to its “special relationship” with the U.S., Tel Aviv remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its Dimona facility has never been subjected to the inspections it now seeks for Iran. But for photographs taken inside the Dimona facility in 1986 by nuclear technician Mordecai Vanunu, that “ambiguity” might well remain intact.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that Iran is not enriching uranium beyond the 3.5% required for nuclear energy. Tehran has agreed to send its uranium abroad for the further enrichment required for medicine (19.5%), a level still well below the 90% required for nuclear weapons.

In mid-September, the U.S. intelligence agencies reported to the White House that their assessment since the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 remains unchanged. They still do not believe that Iran has resumed nuclear weapons development work.

What about Israel? What has their lobby been doing? Answer: lobbying. As during the Kennedy era, Tel Aviv remains focused on a single goal: ensuring that its ally and patron continues a six-decade policy ensuring that Israel is not held accountable—for anything.

At what cost has the U.S. acted as if the Israel lobby is not a foreign agent? The strategic issue faced by Fulbright and the Kennedys remains unresolved: how best can the U.S. eliminate Israeli influence as a threat to national security? Since that fateful letter of June 1963, what has been the cost of this lobby to U.S. interests? What costs have been imposed on others by this special relationship? At what point will Americans say: Enough!

Care and Feeding of the Holocaust Elephant in the Room (spiced up by Ahmadinejad)

freepaliadmin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:03:00 GMT

BY: MARY RIZZO

While preparing the insertion of the article by Nahida Izzat About anti-Semitism, as do all of her thoughtful and intense contributions, many segments caused me to reflect. Her analysis and especially her questions are so important and meaningful, that it would only be logical to address them bit by bit, and I would like to begin with a segment that I believe holds the core to so many of the difficulties of keeping the Palestinian Nakba on the table… it’s that presence in the room of the elephant of the Holocaust.

Incredible, it seems as though it is often the primary argument discussed. I don’t mean only by those who back Israel tooth and nail, but even by those who claim that Israel as a Jewish State must come to an end. Nahida’s first question:

Why is it that we Palestinians are constantly reminded of the horrors of the holocaust, when we had nothing to do with it?

Yes. Why? Why is it the argument in a UN General Assembly the week that the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War was released? Why is it that we have to bear yet again with the Israeli PM raging on about the Holocaust and about how Ahmadinejad denies it, so therefore, “all good people of the world, keep the light of the Holocaust burning bright and let’s keep the focus on Israeli victimhood, current vulnerability and the danger Iran poses” becomes the leitmotif of the day, week, month, year… It is permanent, fuelled constantly.

The Goldstone Report was no small feat of the UN to pull off, and some focus there would have been something close to a dream come true: it was the outcome of an official UN commission headed by a respected judge (a Jewish South African) which revealed that Israel engaged wilfully, deliberately and recklessly in war crimes against the people in Gaza… not in the 1940s, but just last winter. So why did Netanyahu rant and moan? The response is simple: to shift focus with the justification for it that “Ahmadinejad is denying the Holocaust”. But the question begs… Did he?

Had he mentioned the Holocaust in the speech to the UN? I could find not one reference to the Holocaust, much less it’s being denied or not. It was not even mentioned. Yet, what does Netanyahu do? He brings the argument there, because it is beyond doubt that it is effective for Israel’s goal of achieving world sympathy as well as condemnation of Iran, which is a goal of a big part of the “International Community”, and for various nefarious reasons. It gets “sexed up” with the nuclear threat, as if this is indeed the major problem and issue regarding humankind, and we get more and more of these claims that are not really ever verified, “Iran’s got it,” “not yet but close,” “Iran could strike Israel very soon.” All of it backed a few days later by the most intense PR mistake that Iran could muster, long range missile tests. It doesn’t matter now what they do or say, we see the film of the missile set off in a loop for hours and hours on every news show or even commentary.

As I often do, I wonder who’s advising Ahmadinejad, because it sure works wonders for pushing the “Israelis in danger” narrative. Are nuclear weapons going to help bring down the Zionist regime? I really do doubt it, but they sure do a lot to gain them support from the wealthy international community and the political and public backing that would keep Israel’s survival (as a Jewish State) as the priority. I would say that on the face of it, it looks like backward logic.

While Netanyahu and the West rant and rage about the alleged sins of Iran’s President in order to help Israel stay on the top of the game, we see another really bizarre trend in this “constant reminder of the Holocaust”. Surprise surprise, it’s not only the main theme for those whose purpose for existing is to enable Israel who are keeping the “constant reminders of the Holocaust” in the place of prominence. It is also the committed anti-Zionists who like to keep this fil rouge of Ahmadi and the Holocaust running.

Gilad Atzmon, whose views about Zionism are almost always astute, makes the same mistake that Netanayahu does. In his recent paper about Ahmadinejad, Who is a Jew? just a few days after the UN brou-ha-ha he writes: “It is pretty much impossible to deny the fact that Ahmadinejad's take on the holocaust and Israel is coherent, consistent and valid. He seems to have three main issues with the narrative…” and he elaborates on these elements which include numbers, the relevance of historical revision and on the Western responsibility for it.

In the past few years, and in quite a noticeable way, the references to the Holocaust have been decreasing. Did Ahmadinejad deliberately omit the issue of the Holocaust in his important UN speech (which obviously, and predictably, no one seems to know the content of or its theme?) Quite apparently this is the case, and it is indeed plausible that he did it because this was his intention. Nor was the Holocaust mentioned in his speech in Geneva at the International Conference on Racism.

In fact, there is deliberate omission of the matter, and if the translation is to be trusted, we see that he actually says what is not even his own theory, but rather something close to a fact, that is repeated as well by Netanyahu, that the establishment of Israel in Palestine was “in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe.” Following is the entire quote:

Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings. And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine… [Delegates walk out in protest. Applause] And in fact in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe… Okay, please. Thank you. And in fact in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive, racist regime in Palestine. [Applause]

One may ask themselves the classic questions: If we know that the Israelis are always up in arms about Ahmadinejad/Holocaust, and that they use this as justification for reinforcing their garrison mentality and use it effectively to get more money, arms and support, and then if Ahamdinejad has actually reduced this kind of intervention from his international speaking appearances – why is this focus constantly there even by those who are against the Zionist State and its garrison mentality as if he had indeed said what Netanyahu wants everyone to believe he said? If we are getting our information from Ynet and the Western mainstream media, of course we are using distortion as our resource. We have to be careful to avoid that error. When we are debating, discussing the Holocaust of the Second World War, an event that is over, finished and (as both Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad concur) compensated for at least for the Jews, what space does that leave us for debate, discussion and dissemination of information on TODAY’S Holocaust, the Nakba of the Palestinian people? Has a single Palestinian EVER been compensated for the losses which started at the beginning of the last century and are increasing in violence and frequency? No. Certainly not. Nor have the Lebanese been compensated for the losses they have suffered in the brutal war raged against them… no, not in the past century, but just three years ago.

Is it very productive to reiterate the same narrative of Netanyahu even when it’s an instrumental distortion of reality and the Palestinians are tired of it? Is it productive for the Palestinian people?

Another question by Nahida: Why is it that we Palestinians, are to suffer the same fate as the victims of the holocaust by the hands of those who brag worldwide to act for “never again”?

I would venture to guess, Nahida, that your situation is always pushed to the margins because it is simply not deemed as being interesting enough, and Jews and Israelis have been successful in rendering their own situations more appealing, even by way of deceit and distortion.

It seems obvious that while the Holocaust was indeed used as a pretext for the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, it had a lot more than that “going for it”. It was always used by the West to cover its own sins such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden occurring in the same years. It was used to have an “ultimate evil” to point to… in this way, there is no self-reflection that would lead to change, which is actually what political writing in the West often aims to do. Once you have an evil that is defined as something that will be unequalled, once you have established clearly that there is a group that is represented as being a victim more worthy of pity than any other victim (so that any other suffering is going to be relatively inferior), the mechanism of turning a blind eye to Palestinian and Arab suffering can become the norm. And, suffer they must, if there is to be a Jewish State in Palestine, which is simply a racist construct that dictates that Jews have rights that “non-Jews” (the negation terminology is interesting) shall never have. In fact, those who are non-Jews are also peddled as “enemies” even by the institutional peaceniks adored in the West and used for the Hasbara, such as David Grossman and Noa. When you have an enemy, naturally, the narrator is a good guy and almost “forced” into “defence”. It’s a great and handy little game for the Israelis, and the Palestinians have not yet been able to show the world the full extent of their situation. Part of that is because Palestinians are denied a voice and they are often told that it would be preferable for them to follow the arguments that those in Europe or North America are dictating. The very most they can do is to learn to be satisfied with assuming the passive victim role in some progressive sites.

I’ve been running Palestine sites for a long time, but before that, I’ve been reading these sites. It is quite interesting that aside from independent blogs, the Palestinian voice is the exception, not the rule, in the progressive or pro-resistance media. I believe that Palestine Think Tank is a happy exception, because most of our contributors and editors are Palestinians, as well as the majority of our content being written by Palestinians. However, just a glance on almost any site about Palestine in English, you are going to find out quite soon that the Palestinian voice is nearly absent. You will see papers (mostly) by Jews and Israelis, articles taken from Haaretz, books by Americans and Britons, but the Palestinian voice is not given its due space.

It certainly is not because they do not have opinions and do not express them well. PTT alone is testament to the variety, vibrancy and originality of these writers. Sometimes, it seems, there is a lot of gatekeeping surrounding what Palestinians say, and by those who make a point of defending freedom of speech for those whose main or sole argument is the Holocaust. I will enter into detail further in this article.

Self-criticism and self-analysis are the basis of any transformation, personal and national alike. Active transformation in the form of popular uprising, which by now a vast majority of Palestinians see as inevitable and necessary, given the failure of politics, also entails the awareness of the level of distress that is growing, distress that time is running out and that even the most basic Palestinian requirements and demands will not be met, as even the most steadfast resistance movements contemplate the realpolitik of recognition of Israel as a Jewish State. This would ratify an enormous injustice, and cancel forever the chance of return. It is necessary for Palestinians to voice all of their views and to act, as the feeling is strong that time is not on their side.

Revolutions imported from anywhere else but internally, among the people, are by necessity viewed with suspicion. The foundation of a popular revolt is always internal. It entails coming into consciousness of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the system or leaders, and thus instilling and encouraging the active, revolutionary spirit of resistance. It is an overthrowing of the mentality that “the people” are passive subjects who must be controlled and must surrender their consent, even against their better judgment. There is no ruling or governing body in the world that tolerates too much dissent.

Every Western country prides itself on claiming that it tolerates dissent. Whether they actually do or not is questionable, but this is at any rate one of the yardsticks to measure the level of democracy they have achieved. Within activism, the dissenting voice is indeed the dominant one. Thus, promotion and support of self-critical voices, whenever they have the freedom to arise, as this is always a risk, is a necessary basis for changing a negative status quo. Fighting gatekeeping within our ranks is a primary concern, and Palestine Think Tank has never backed off on fighting this unhealthy censorship mechanism. Especially vocal gatekeepers, as we know, are the Jewish activists, who always have been very effective in keeping their agendas as the dominant ones. They tend to impose focus on arguments that are more interesting to them, and ones they presumably feel are interesting to others. These arguments are invariably the “Jewish experience”, past, present and future. This naturally includes the two hot topics that always stir up attention, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. These issues are woven into every discourse, as we have seen, by Zionists and anti-Zionists alike, as if the Jewish experience is indeed the interesting one, and the Palestinians simply have to adjust to playing second fiddle, even at the cost of “constantly being reminded” of these issues, precisely the complaint that Nahida has made in her recent article. As both Meshaal and Nasrallah have said, with the blood of their people still fresh from Israeli aggression, “there is a real Holocaust going on today”, the Holocaust against the people of Palestine and Lebanon.

It is with the goal of keeping the Palestinian and Arab demands for freedom and the necessity of promoting their own voices, that this site has published hundreds of articles by Palestinians and Arabs which call for a more active involvement in building their own future, and refusal to negotiate away their rights, or allow anyone else to set their agenda. At the end of the day, they ought to know what is best for themselves more than a European, American, Israeli or Jew does. This was the spirit of the excellent article by Mohamed Khodr, An Embarassment of Riches and Riches of Embarassments where he pointed out the vast level of the failure of governments in Arab nations to be true to the principles of Islam, often at the expense of the Palestinians. Another important article that was similarly self-critical was by Sami Jamil Jadallah What is Wrong with the Palestinian People? It was his appraisal of the apparent Palestinian complacency in the face of betrayal of the Palestinian people at every level. Anyone who engages regularly with Palestinians knows that this is a big part of the content of their conversations. There was nothing really new or shocking in these positions, despite the enormous pain being expressed of being unable to get angry enough at this state of affairs. The apathy, caused by years of neglect of their cause and the extreme subservience they have in the global sphere, leads to a lack of hope and the feeling that there is no chance to control their own destiny. There is also a frequent tendency of activists who are neither Muslims nor Palestinians to be unaware of this condition of frustration, and they prefer as well to not “offend” Palestinians and insist upon viewing them exclusively in the prism as the “victim” who is waiting for rescue from afar.

Certainly, Palestinians and Muslims are the victims of the worst sort of oppression and war. Their ability to counter the multitude of factors keeping them defeated can’t be denied by anyone. However even “victims” have the capacity to rise up and contribute to the discourse in all of its dynamics. They have the right to mobilise themselves, to speak their minds against not only the Israelis, but also against the “House Arabs” who sell them out or bend to pragmatism when it will run counter to their fundamental demands.

The only effective resistance has only ever been when people stop waiting for approval from outside, when they stop hoping for reform or rescue and when they point their fingers at traitors and encourage healthy rage. Effective resistance has only been determination to not be subjects of someone else’s projects for them or to fit into a profile people have outfitted for them, but to see themselves as the creators of their own destinies. The case of Palestinians is more complicated than one might imagine. It seems as if new hurdles are set in front of them at every turn: they have been unfortunately abandoned by the world when they applied the democratic principles of elections and their situation is further complicated by their’s being a dynamic and complex society that is divided into factions and geographically separated. Acquisition of one’s own narrative, of one’s own power to dissent, being recognised as the protagonists and not the side issue, this is something Palestinians are attempting to gain and their efforts are necessary to enable their own resistance at all levels, and the unity they need to succeed. One is free to disagree with the content of their discourse, but one has the obligation to not discourage the necessary act of their right to free speech.

While circulating especially thought-provoking or controversial papers, as I do at times to a small mailing list of readers, I encouraged the reading of this bitter, painful but powerful essay that offered many points for discussion. I was included in a group mailing of some dozen or so people started by a Jewish activist primarily focused on the subject of the Holocaust who has written a half dozen or so essays, some of which I’ve published. The fact that I may not agree with everything he has written did not however prevent me from encouraging him to write more often so that his right to say unpopular things that could be discussed was safeguarded by me. This is what he wrote:

I don't think this piece should have been written (certainly not in English) and should certainly not have been posted on your website.

I had to wonder if this the same person who wrote back in 2006, published on my previous site, Peacepalestine:

The last point on Ernst and Ingrid (Zundel) has become something of a mantra that I have had to recite so many times in the last year or so: Neither Ingrid nor Ernst has ever used violence, nor have they ever called on anyone else to use violence. Neither has ever discriminated against anyone on ethnic or religious grounds, nor have they called on anyone else to do so. Finally, and for me, most importantly, neither has ever suppressed anyone's right to think, speak and write freely or called on anyone else to do so. Can the same be said for their opponents – particularly those anti-Zionist, and often Marxist Jews?

Whatever I say or write is always characterised by doubt and hesitation. Some have said that this is because I'm afraid of coming clean about my beliefs. But that's not true. It's simply that I am never so sure about anything, other than the value of keeping an open mind and tolerating other opinions.

Evidently, the value of keeping an open mind and tolerating other opinions, well, at least a Palestinian one, has been scrapped.

Besides the fact that the Palestinian author has a long track record for actively demanding redress from the Jews without renouncing the Palestinian right of return, calls for justice, truth and comprehensive archives of all the appropriations of Palestinian property and of all crimes committed against his own people, something hindered time and again by the PLO, calling for his silencing or censorship of him on a Palestinian site is quite inappropriate.

Is tolerance of others’ opinions only a value if those opinions coincide with one’s own or if they are being expressed by a Westerner, Israeli or Jew? Wouldn’t it be more constructive, rather than suppressing someone else’s right to think, speak or write freely or telling an editor they should certainly not have published work one disapproves of, to debate the author? To understand his views? To challenge his claims that one disagrees with and ask him to substantiate them?

Well, my contact in the mailing group didn’t only ignore that invitation to him to do so, something I’ve always encouraged all to do with his own writing, he also chose to not participate in the lively debate between the author and many other people, most of them Palestinians. It seems as though the issue was of great interest and relevancy to quite a few people. Well, that’s his loss, because others have gained by the experience. Someone who is by and large considered to be the maximum expert on and opponent of the Israeli and Jewish lobby, Jeff Blankfort, had this to say in the comments:

Sami, your opening piece on this thread has really made me look at the reality with new eyes. The time has indeed come to put away the bombast, romanticism, and delusions that have contributed to the current situation and not wait for another generation yet to be born to liberate the land.

As an editor and translator of activists for a decade, particularly for writers whose focus is the occupation of Palestine, quite a few of them Palestinians, in fact, I have seen and edited and published every type of argumentation: obviously, this fact would prevent me from agreeing with all of the content, but it is not my duty to censor, but to facilitate discourse. The arguments are so varied in their dominating theme, be it religious, secular, socialist, revolutionary, feminist, Arab Nationalist, pragmatic, strategic, focused on sensitising Westerners, aimed at an Arab public, even satirical pieces that refer to themes that are quite particular. For many of these writers, getting their issues to a broad public is an infrequent event. Although the material is extremely enlightening, the lack of exposure of their voices keeps their issues in the margins. Just the idea that Arab Nationalism as a means of gaining Palestinian liberation, a major item of discourse in the Middle East, is all but unheard of in many progressive sites should not be surprising. These sites are busy (still) thinking about the Holocaust rather than issues that interest Palestinians and are part of a strategic paradigm. As a Palestinian person once wrote in comments on the site, “If I convert to Judaism, I think I will all of a sudden start becoming interesting to people. Should I do it?”

So, with all of this in mind, I have a few modest proposals to make for those who are involved in any way in the Palestinian issue:

1)      Freedom of speech should be the right of everyone. This would include the right and duty to critique people’s arguments as well as criticise across the board, “House Arabs”, “censors and gatekeepers”. They aren’t really serving the Palestinian cause, are they? If they are, we need to know how.

2)      Demand broader dissemination of the Palestinian and Arab voice. They alone are the victims of Western, Imperialist and Zionist domination, and indeed, they are the last victims of the Holocaust. Anyone who can, should encourage their right to dissent, just like Westerners expect for themselves.

3)      To get the Holocaust issue once and for all in its perspective and not as the core issue of international policy and the consequential activist focus. Just like 9/11 has shown us, focus on one single dramatic event, even when all the facts will never be made available, serves as a pretext to legitimise things such as the Global War on Terror and the actual wars against nations that are the consequence of this. New wars are being planned and justifications made for them in the same moment that old wars are still producing their scores of victims. This precaution should be heeded since it is proven again and again that this is the modus operandi. If focus on Holocaust we must, let us focus on the Holocaust of epic proportions going on in Gaza right now.

4)      Ahmadinejad is not Iran. He is the President who governs in a situation of major internal dissent on the verge of further popular explosions. He should not be used as a convenient instrument to attack the sovereign nation of Iran. His words about the world situation may be sincere, but he must be judged (primarily by his own people) by his actions, not all of which do gain popular support and some of which feed the Israeli paranoia. But, his words MUST actually be the ones he is using, not some narrative of him that can be pulled out as an instrument for any cause, be it Zionist or anti-Zionist.

The active choice for those who seek true and complete Palestinian liberation has to be openness to the voices that do not accept compromise or surrender of their rights. Support of people who will not betray the Palestinian and Arab search for freedom. We have to have faith in the power of the Word, in the power of popular uprising, and continue to have faith in the future of the Arab populations who WILL set their own agendas and speak their own minds without waiting for anyone’s permission or approval. Like all of us, they are seeking solutions to their problems and analysing their own reality, putting it in the spotlight, where it belongs. They are tired of being “constantly reminded of the Holocaust”, and who can blame them?

The diversity of their voices is an asset that needs to be consolidated, not a liability to eliminate. Different thoughts contribute to growth, and the more we hear, the more we learn. Variety, diversity, space for participation and discussion of the issues that Palestinians find important is the key to keeping their agenda on the table and raising the consciousness that is at the basis of all resistance. Free Minds for a Free Palestine is not just the motto of our site. This IS a THINK tank, after all!

UNRWA In the Focus of Accusations

freepaliadmin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:50:00 GMT

On Friday October 9 2009, the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Quds published a statement of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), Karen Koning AbuZayed in which she announced the discontinuation of some important activities of the UNRWA, such as scholarships for Palestinian students.

According to Al-Quds, the statement of Koning came during a political interview which she gave to the “Middle East Report” from London. According to Koning: “the UNRWA has a financial deficit estimated at $100 million, and that the UNRWA does not get a sufficient budget to cover its emergency activities”. (Click on pictures to make them bigger).

Koning said that “what most concerns us in the UNRWA is that we are not getting enough money to cover our activities such as education and health care”. She added: “At the end of this year we have deficit of $17 million. We hope that our contacts during the General Assembly in New York will fill the gap and help us to go ahead until the end of the year”. AbuZayed expressed her deep concern about next year, 2010, as the year will start “while we do not have anything”.
Questions Marks

As a comment on the announced discontinuation of some important activities of the UNRWA, such as scholarships for Palestinian students, I would like to ask the the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen Koning AbuZayed, some questions:

Where is the OPEC grant (US$1.2) of 1 July 2009 which the Commissioner-General which she personally accepted and received from the OPEC Fund as a donation towards a new scholarship fund for talented Palestinians?

Where is the OPEC grant of 1 July 2009 which she herself accepted from the OPEC Fund for International Development for a microfinance fund towards supporting the private business sector of Palestinian Refugees through a micro-finance scheme (PALFUND) which reached (US$10) million?

“Justified” Corruption at UNRWA

On 1 October 2009, Al-Nahar News from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza reported that Mr. Ramadan Al-Omari of the Comptroller General unit of UNRWA decided to leave his post after serving for more than thirty years in the position. Mr. Al-Omari sent an open letter to the Commissioner General of UNRWA, her deputy, and to all members of UNRWA Board, in which he revealed some aspects of corruption and misappropriation of funds and the budget of the UNRWA.

Al-Omari said that "the US$ twenty-five million budget of the UNRWA for the years 2010 / 2011 were spent without tangible returns for the Palestinians”. He added: "Most of that money has gone to consultants working in the UNRWA and for the employment of more than 15 international staff which were not needed, each one contracted with a salary of not less than one hundred thousand dollars (US$100.000) a year”.

Mr. Al-Omari criticized the work of UNRWA, which has recently adopted very questionable methods in terms of style, in terms of organizational development, and in the terms of making decisions. He said that “such developments have created an imposed upon us an international staff which we do not need”. He also stated that the UNRWA decisions are taken within a circle of agency managers who form a closed group, de-facto conspiring with each other, who have neither connection to nor interest in the Palestinians, and who take their decisions without consulting with the other responsible managers in the UNRWA work. Al-Omari was perplexed by how the UNRWA gives unlimited powers to the Director of Human Resources Management, taking in consideration any other input from within the organization or outside.

Al-Omari pointed to the main of contention that led to his resignation, which was related to the recent abolition by the higher UNRWA administration of the committees of human resources and contracts, in implement their plans without referral to the advice and review by these committees, which had been high regulatory powers within the agency.

Al-Omari said “the UNRWA wasted huge amounts of money on the so-called summer games in Gaza. This budget would have been enough to rebuild dozens of schools which were destroyed by the Israeli occupation during recent years”.

Karen Koning Denies

For her part, Karen koning, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, said that the statements and allegations of Mr. Al-Omari are wrong, different and far away of the truth. She added: "It is unfortunate that the Al-Omari letter was circulated (passed) to the press”. Koning considers that the open letter of Al-Omari is “damage to the Palestinian refugees and the UNRWA”. But her statement appears to be the usual “blame the victims” tactic used by psychopaths. See Koning denial as (PDF)

Al-Omari Replies to the Denial of Koning

Dear Karen,

Thanks for forwarding to me your message to the Management Committee members and for copying me on your letter to the HQ staff, both dated 4 September 2009. To a large extent the substance of both letters is the same and, therefore, I would like to address the two in this brief response, and to copy same to all addressees. Please note that I do not want to enter into a protracted exchange, but the way both letters were drafted for your signature indicates a lot of window dressing and a distraction from the real issues.

In this regard, I notice that in both letters you have chosen to ignore my comments in paragraphs six and seven of the open letter regarding the critical issues of “hiring friends and former colleagues” and the practice of “favoritism and marginalization” respectively. I blame no body for ignoring them, as I know none would have any defense in addressing these management lapses.

It is with regret that your reference in both letters to my “disagreement with the reform process” is incorrect and is out of context. I was, and remain, a big supporter of any reform process. I would very much be in support of the change to the better and not just the change for the sake of change as many of the OD activities have transpired to be. You may wish to recall that it was me who spearheaded the transformation of the Agency’s budget to a programme based budget since the beginning of the year 2000. You will also recall the more recent comment of the ACABQ which praised UNRWA’s budget to the extent that it was suggested to be used as a model by other UN organizations.

It is also with regret that the statement in respect of the “Comptroller’s assertion that consultants have been hired to perform tasks that could have been easily undertaken by UNRWA staff, ……. that the majority of the OD Budget goes towards the salary of new staff whom we are proposing for absorption into the UN Regular Budget” (the last sentence in the fifth paragraph of your letter to the MC members), is misleading and does not address the issue as discussed with you in person. I regret that I have to be more direct and explain. The example I referred to in paragraph six of my open letter regarding the use by HRD of a friend/former colleague consultant to perform a study on the retirement benefits in the area of operations where the consultant’s work ended with a report containing data about the retirement benefits in the region without giving any suggestions or recommendations as to how the various retirement schemes could be summed up to produce an UNRWA specific retirement system that would be compatible with the practice of the host authorities. You may wish to note that this useless study has cost the Agency $21,266.32 (doc 0-8AFV004095 refers) for work that was done in a month’s time. This is exactly what I meant with my earlier statement that the same task could have been easily undertaken by a local staff member from amongst the all competent ones in the Division of Compensation and Management Services.

In connection with the above the OD, in my view, has become a job creation programme for international staff. It so far employs sixteen international staff members, the actual cost of whom is, so far, some $ 4 million. It also involves the hiring of international consultants, the cost of whom is so far another $ 4 million! It is with sadness that I report that the cost so far paid to the local staff hired under the OD is only $ 133,000.

It is true that the OD is separately funded and that the General Fund money is not used for its activities, yet, I have to clarify, as you will appreciate, that donors have very limited funds to give to UNRWA against the various budget lines; hence any funding to the OD would certainly negatively affect the funding to the General Fund. Moreover, having the OD separately funded should not justify spending such funds on activities that do not produce any benefits to the Organization.

It is with regret that the OD defenders keep using the Gaza Field initiatives of the “Schools of Excellence” and the “Education Recovery Plan” as successes for the OD. You will agree with me that credit should go to where it belongs. These two initiatives were exclusively initiated and implemented by the GFO management totally independent from the OD, and that they are funded from the Field’s own resources, mainly the Emergency Appeal budgets. The fact that they coincided with the OD should not give any credit to the OD process itself.

Before I conclude, and by the way I still have a lot more to say, I want to ask you a question again on what basis the leading consultant of the OD said in the June QMC that “half of those around this table may not be here by this time next year”. Was this said in vacuum? Or it resulted from the “close” discussions within your inner circle? What else I need to say to further prove the existence of the closed circle management approach that has been prevailing for the last few years?

Finally, concerning your statement that my open letter contains “unsubstantiated accusations”, I believe the best judge here is to have an independent review of the issues raised with the objective of making the facts clear to the Agency’s management and staff, the host authorities, and the refugee community at large. Read the letter in Arabic as (PDF)

Regards,
Ramadan

Contradicting UNRWA Policies in Palestine

Recently, the UNRWA, which until now did not find it necessary to teach the Palestinians the ir own history, the history of 61 years of Catastrophe, the “Nakba”, and which keeps its schools in Palestinian refugee camps in Palestine and in the Diaspora in a miserable state, decided to teach the Holocaust to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Why must the Palestinians learn about the Holocaust at the UNRWA schools, while the UNRWA did never teach these children about their own history of Nakba, and the daily genocide which they live since 61 years under the Zionists occupation? Is the purpose of the defalcation of funds from the UNRWA by the cronies of Koning related to this travesty?

The shameful and contradicting standards of the UNRWA in the sector of education has brought about a huge reaction of anger in Palestine. On 1 July 2009 I asked the Commissioner-General, Karen Koning AbuZayed, personally:

Who is responsible for the eliminating the teaching of the Palestinian Nakba, the genocide of the Palestinians, from the curriculum of study of Palestinian children in schools and UNRWA?

Why does the UNRWA not teach the Palestinian children their own history in its schools in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan refugee camps? And which are the aims of the UNRWA in cultivating this ignorance of the Palestinian history in its schools?

Koning, who obviously considers teaching about the Nazi genocide during the second world war, which interests nobody in Palestine, to be a part of a “human rights” curriculum, did not answer my questions, she said anything, and continued squeezing her hair. She even turned off my tape recorder, which was in front of her on the table.

Decisions of Collaborators Furthers Palestinian Genocide

freepaliadmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:08:00 GMT

Addameer, Al Haq, Al Mezan, Badil, Civic Coalition for Jerusalem, DCI- Palestine. NSAN Centre, Independent Commission for Human Rights, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Ramallah Centre for Human Rights Studies, Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, wrote a statement:

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied, Decision of Palestinian Leadership and International Pressure an Insult to the Victims

Yesterday, 2 October 2009, the Palestinian leadership, under heavy international pressure lead by the United States, deferred the draft proposal at the Human Rights Council endorsing all the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission (the Goldstone Report). This deferral denies the Palestinian peoples’ right to an effective judicial remedy and the equal protection of the law. It represents the triumph of politics over human rights. It is an insult to all victims and a rejection of their rights.

The crimes documented in the report of the UN Fact Finding Mission represent the most serious violations of international law; Justice Goldstone concluded that there was evidence to indicate that crimes against humanity may have been committed in the Gaza Strip. Violations of international law continue to this day, inter alia, through the continuing Israeli-imposed illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. The findings of the Mission confirmed earlier investigations conducted by independent Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations.
The injustice that has now been brought upon Palestinians has been brought upon everyone on this globe. International human rights and humanitarian law are not subject to discrimination, they are not dependent on nationality, religion, or political affiliation. International human rights and humanitarian law apply universally to all human beings.

The rule of law is intended to protect individuals, to guarantee their fundamental rights. Yet, if the rule of law is to be respected it must be enforced. World history, and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land has shown us that as long as impunity persists, the law will continue to be violated; innocent civilians will continue to suffer the horrific consequences.

Justice delayed is justice denied. All victims have a legitimate right to an effective judicial remedy, and the equal protection of the law. These rights are universal: they are not subject to political considerations. In the nine months since Operation Cast Lead, no effective judicial investigations have been conducted into the conflict. Impunity prevails. In such situations, international law demands recourse to international judicial mechanisms. Victims’ rights must be upheld. Those responsible must be held to account.

The belief that accountability and the rule of law can be brushed aside in the pursuit of peace is misguided. History has taught us time and time again, that sustainable peace can only be built on human rights, on justice, and the rule of law. For many years in Palestine international law, and the rule of law, has been sacrificed in the name of politics, and cast aside in favour of the peace process. This approach has been tried, and it has failed: the occupation has been solidified, illegal settlements have continued to expand, the right to self determination has been denied; innocent civilians suffer the horrific consequences. It is now time to pursue justice, and a peace built on a foundation of human rights, dignity, and the rule of law. In Justice Goldstone’s words, there is no peace without justice.

As human rights organizations we strongly condemn the Palestinian leaderships’ decision to defer the proposal endorsing all the recommendations of the Fact Finding Mission, and the pressure exerted by certain members of the international community. Such pressure is in conflict with States' international obligations, and is an insult to the Palestinian people.

As human rights organizations concerned with rights and justice, we declare that we will double our efforts to seek justice for the victims of the violations of human rights and international law without delay.

The Israel Lobby's Global Propaganda Manual

freepaliadmin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:45:00 GMT

BY: PAUL J. BALLES

Paul J. Balles views a major public relations manual for Israel lobbyists. Written by Dr Frank Luntz, a US Republican political consultant and pollster, on behalf of The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, it teaches pro-Israel propagandists how to hoodwink people about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how to silence critics and how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

More than 50 years ago, Vance Packard shook the commercial world with the publication of his book The Hidden Persuaders. It was, as the book jacket claims, “A revealing, often shocking explanation of new techniques of research and methods of persuasion.”

Packard revealed, “If people couldn’t discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating unreasonably, in some easy, warm, emotional way.”

Much merchandizing success, according to Packard, “…hinged, to a large extent, upon successfully manipulating or coping with our guilt feelings, fears, anxieties, hostilities, loneliness feelings, inner tensions”.

Packard raised serious questions of morality related to the “people-manipulating activities of persuaders … and their ability to contact millions of us simultaneously”, giving them “the power to do good or evil on a scale never before possible in a very short time”.

Among the most evil of the hidden persuaders are the political propagandists. Their “evil” stems from the fact that they have a political agenda, which discriminates unreasonably and is designed to manipulate emotions.

The manipulative approach to politics is, of course, not a discovery of the 1950s, or even the 20th century. Napoleon Bonaparte set up a press bureau that he called his Bureau of Public Opinion. Its function was “to manufacture political trends to order”.

Just as Napoleon Bonaparte believed that “public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield”, Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian author of The Prince, described the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm.

In a document published by The Israel Project entitled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary”, Dr Frank Luntz unmasks a modern-day propaganda campaign that would have made Napoleon and Machiavelli proud. He writes:

There is NEVER, EVER, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children. NEVER. The primary Palestinian public relations goal is to demonstrate that the so-called “hopelessness of the oppressed Palestinians” is what causes them to go out and kill children. This must be challenged immediately, aggressively, and directly.

The emotional appeal to saving children works, but the appeal is based on two lies:

(1) that Palestinians generally (not only suicide bomber extremists) are the ones who kill children, while Israelis (not individual extremists, but Israel’s armed forces) never slaughter Palestinian children.

(2) The second falsehood is that the Palestinians have a public relations goal that must be challenged when, in fact, the Palestinians have proven to be hopeless and goalless when it comes to public relations. Unlike Frank Luntz, the Palestinians have no effective PR voices. They can’t even get their ambassador in the UK to speak out to the British public about Israel’s lies and propaganda.

Next, Luntz attempts to sound reasonable by speaking of acceptable disagreements about economics or politics against fundamental principles of civilized people. The evil allusion here is that the Palestinians are the uncivilized people who target Israeli children.

“We may disagree about politics and we may disagree about economics. But there is one fundamental principle that all peoples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people do not target innocent women and children for death,” writes Luntz.

The entire passage, again appealing unreasonably to emotions, makes the pretence that Israel did not target innocent women and children for death with their murderous indiscriminate bombing and missile attacks on Gaza against a huge civilian population of women and children.

However, distorted propaganda about children isn’t enough for Luntz. This is but one part of a page out of 114 pages devoted to this manual for distribution to thousands of propagandists for Israel.

Advancing only as far as page nine, the guided Israel promoters will find “Words that work” (sections that are actually throughout the book). Here’s what Luntz has to say about Gaza:

Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process.

How generous he makes the Israelis appear, when in fact the removal of Jewish settlers from Gaza had nothing to do with giving peace a chance. As the Israeli Yossi Alpher points out, removal of the settlers gave a demographic advantage to Israel. He says, “no longer are Jewish and Arab populations mixed there in a manner that points to a single binational state as the solution”.

In other words, Ariel Sharon could close the borders, imprison Gazans, hoping they will simply be forced to leave by starvation, murder fishermen and initiate military operations whenever they’re not involved in attacking Lebanon to the north, to slaughter more Hamas women and children.

Then Luntz adds more “Words that work” for the indoctrination of his readers – Israeli propagandists:

Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.

As mentioned earlier, withdrawal from Gaza had nothing to do with an “overture for peace”. The rocket attacks have been a response to being locked into an open-air prison; and they’re aimed at land stolen by Israel. The “drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis” are figments of Luntz’s imagination.

The “free from terrorism and live with defensible borders” line is the overworked motto that twists the truth in the continuing belief that if repeated often enough it will be believed.

No matter how often the propagandists repeat this mantra, the truth is that a few resistance fighters from Hamas have lobbed ineffective rockets against a well-supplied army of Israel’s state terrorists; and the borders they want to defend are on land stolen from the Palestinians.

One might wish that the training in how to spread Israeli propaganda would stop there. If the Palestinians were up to the task, they might counter the lies with what they know of the history and suffering of Palestinians under occupation. Unfortunately, those with the linguistic ability to cope with the Israeli propaganda machine worry about endangering themselves and their families by speaking the truth.

Those who can only speak Arabic fluently are often busy fighting tribal wars within (Gazans vs. the Palestinian Authority), and they can’t compete with Israel’s skilled English speakers or against the organized promotional efforts Israel makes with Americans and Europeans.

Making the task of exposing the lies and deceit exceptionally difficult, Luntz’s propaganda tract, which unravels advice about the “how-to” of Israeli propaganda for 114 pages, seems Herculean to say the least.

Luntz offers advice about things like “Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel.” He follows that with “Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism.”

He tells his readers to make salient comparisons between Israel and America: “The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ’security’, and ‘peace’”.

Even while Israel is throwing Arabs out of their homes in East Jerusalem to make room for Jews, Luntz repeats the boast about how “Israel, America’s ally, is a democracy in the Middle East”. If he reported the truth about the so-called democracy in Israel, he would reveal how it’s really a bigoted apartheid state.

The book is full of charts showing just how effective Israel’s propaganda campaign has been. Not only do Americans believe that Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East, but that they both share the same values.

Another chart shows that 58 per cent of Americans believe that the US should support Israel, while only 9 per cent believe that they should support Palestinians. Even when coaching others in how to propagandize, Luntz couldn’t resist the revealing boast about how effective their PR work has been.

The entire screed utilizes all the tricks available to a clever wordsmith: how to use rhetorical questions to silence others, how to pretend that you’re sympathetic with the people but not their evil leaders, how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

All of that came from the first of 18 chapters. Several other chapters, especially on “words that work”, talk about settlements, Israel’s so-called right to self-defence, Hamas, and tackling a nuclear Iran will be taken up in coming exposures.

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Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.

Ibish's new task: Defending the zionists' "right" to Palestine….And he's itching for a fight, but no one is taking him up on it

freepaliadmin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:41:00 GMT

BY: YOUSEF ABUDAYYEH

One should become worried, when spent tools of corrupt Arab regimes start feeling ignored and anxious because no one is answering their URGENT questions. These people are so full of themselves, they actually believe that the Arab American community would go out and buy their "books". I am not a psychologist, but it looks like these people might very soon hurt themselves again if they do not get committed into an asylum and soon.

Asali, Ibish, Zogby and many others like them, lost credibility with the Arab American community when they chose, and for a clear personal benefit, to side with the enemies of the Arab people, from Saudi Arabia to the United States. The millions they're getting from these enemies and are using on a daily bases to put down the Arab masses, their resistance groups and their hopes, has only a one purpose; to defeat us.
Their direct relationship with the US government(s), has not worked like the US wanted or they themselves hoped. No one person or state, regardless of how strong and rich they might be, can force injustice on our people. The One Secular Democratic State solution has been around way before Ibish could eat his first pancake. It did not advance because none of the powers in charge is interested a just solution, after all, they are the ones that created this problem, and we need to force our solution on them. Could Ibish or his co-conspirators explain how a two state solution is just or even feasible? Is it just because the Zionists are obeying the unjust partition of '48 or Camp David or Oslo or any of the 100's of UN resolutions? Or did they listen to the US governments, who give them billions yearly, against the US laws because they use these billions in continuing an illegal occupation of the land and its people?
Ibish and his anti-Arab freedom camp should know that we do not rely on the Kings and Presidents of the Arab Regimes or on the US governments to get us our right. The Arab masses believe beyond any doubt, that Palestine is the heart of the Arab World and that no one will rest until it's free from the river to the sea, and that it will be liberated sooner than later despite the stand that the traitor Arab Regimes and their supporters are taking. Ibish and company are situated in the camp that is not on our people's side, so we really do not pay any attention to what they say or do anymore. And that is one of the reasons why nobody can even hear the little noise Ibish and company are making.

To read his article, see:
http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/in_print/2009/09/08/1252382400

YAHOO HAS TO ACKNOWLEDGE PALESTINE SHOULD IT WANT TO FLIRT WITH OUR POCKETS

freepaliadmin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:17:00 GMT

BY: IQBAL TAMIMI

One can't help but see malignant projects of gigantic companies committing forgery to steal the history of some nations in broad daylight.

As an example I would say Yahoo. For many years yahoo published pages on its websites and created online services where it has deleted Palestine from its charts, not just Palestine but the West Bank as well.

As an example, their UK website offers a daily horoscope for those who are interested to know what Yahoo believes their day or week is going to look like, despite the fact that the majority of people do not believe in this kind of speculation, it is still amusing to know how they are going to play with our minds. But for once I am going to read the horoscope of Yahoo, and tell the investors that they are entering a gambling game, beware of offending the players; otherwise you will notice a big hole in your pocket.

I looked at the list of countries should one has to fill his birthplace to hear the wisdom of Yahoo's fortune tellers, Palestine was not mentioned at all, and neither was the West Bank but surprise, surprise Israel is.

Yahoo never cared about Palestine before but I think it is about time that it does, for Yahoo has just acquired the Palestinian Maktoob portal founded by the Palestinian son of Nablus Samih Toukan. www.maktoob.com is considered the largest Arab online portal at a value of around $75M-$80M. This deal Yahoo is after to further its influence in the Arab World as a fast growing internet and mobile market will not be welcomed if it chooses to ignore the Palestinians who are still running the portal and will continue to do so according to the reported information.

The Maktoob portal is based in Jordan but owned and run by the Palestinians that Yahoo does not recognise, the majority of bloggers and business advertisers are Palestinians, even though many are not still based in Palestine but rather holding the most prestigious posts in the Gulf countries and owners and investors of the biggest businesses abroad on international level.

It has been reported that the new Yahoo division will be called Yahoo Middle East. And from now on Yahoo products will be made Arabic and content will be "Arabized" to serve 20 million users in the Arab world along with the original 16 million users of maktoob, thus "arabizing" the Yahoo Mail and messenger along with other services including the mobiles.

Yahoo is expecting to continue the strong commercial relationship with the companies that used to contribute to the success of Maktoob.com. Should this be the case I would say Yahoo should start the first step by respecting the Arab market that would feel offended by eliminating Palestine from every choice list created by Yahoo.

It has been said that Yahoo is concerned about freedom of speech in the region since it is known for its censorship online, while the Maktoob bloggers are concerned that Yahoo will bring with it its pro-Israel policies to the area.

I would advise Yahoo to rearrange its priorities and fix the way it is handling Middle Eastern issues and particularly Palestine. If Yahoo is intending upon digging deep into the pockets of the wealthy Arab business dynamos, it should start to show some respect and sensitivity to the people who are going to make or break its success, starting by acknowledging the fact that it can't hijack their history and remodel the geography of the area, otherwise it will face a great loss.

Can We Talk? The Middle East "Peace Industry"

freepaliadmin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:31:00 GMT

BY: FARIS GIACAMAN

Upon finding out that I am Palestinian, many people I meet at college in the United States are eager to inform me of various activities that they have participated in that promote "coexistence" and "dialogue" between both sides of the "conflict," no doubt expecting me to give a nod of approval. However, these efforts are harmful and undermine the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel — the only way of pressuring Israel to cease its violations of Palestinians' rights.

When I was a high school student in Ramallah, one of the better known "people-to-people" initiatives, Seeds of Peace, often visited my school, asking students to join their program. Almost every year, they would send a few of my classmates to a summer camp in the US with a similar group of Israeli students. According to the Seeds of Peace website, at the camp they are taught "to develop empathy, respect, and confidence as well as leadership, communication and negotiation skills — all critical components that will facilitate peaceful coexistence for the next generation." They paint quite a rosy picture, and most people in college are very surprised to hear that I think such activities are misguided at best, and immoral, at worst. Why on earth would I be against "coexistence," they invariably ask?

During the last few years, there have been growing calls to bring to an end Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people through an international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). One of the commonly-held objections to the boycott is that it is counter-productive, and that "dialogue" and "fostering coexistence" is much more constructive than boycotts.

With the beginning of the Oslo accords in 1993, there has been an entire industry that works toward bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in these "dialogue" groups. The stated purpose of such groups is the creating of understanding between "both sides of the conflict," in order to "build bridges" and "overcome barriers." However, the assumption that such activities will help facilitate peace is not only incorrect, but is actually morally lacking.

The presumption that dialogue is needed in order to achieve peace completely ignores the historical context of the situation in Palestine. It assumes that both sides have committed, more or less, an equal amount of atrocities against one another, and are equally culpable for the wrongs that have been done. It is assumed that not one side is either completely right or completely wrong, but that both sides have legitimate claims that should be addressed, and certain blind spots that must be overcome. Therefore, both sides must listen to the "other" point of view, in order to foster understanding and communication, which would presumably lead to "coexistence" or "reconciliation."

Such an approach is deemed "balanced" or "moderate," as if that is a good thing. However, the reality on the ground is vastly different than the "moderate" view of this so-called "conflict." Even the word "conflict" is misleading, because it implies a dispute between two symmetric parties. The reality is not so; it is not a case of simple misunderstanding or mutual hatred which stands in the way of peace. The context of the situation in Israel/Palestine is that of colonialism, apartheid and racism, a situation in which there is an oppressor and an oppressed, a colonizer and a colonized.

In cases of colonialism and apartheid, history shows that colonial regimes do not relinquish power without popular struggle and resistance, or direct international pressure. It is a particularly naive view to assume that persuasion and "talking" will convince an oppressive system to give up its power.

The apartheid regime in South Africa, for instance, was ended after years of struggle with the vital aid of an international campaign of sanctions, divestments and boycotts. If one had suggested to the oppressed South Africans living in bantustans to try and understand the other point of view (i.e. the point of view of South African white supremacists), people would have laughed at such a ridiculous notion. Similarly, during the Indian struggle for emancipation from British colonial rule, Mahatma Gandhi would not have been venerated as a fighter for justice had he renounced satyagraha — "holding firmly to the truth," his term for his nonviolent resistance movement — and instead advocated for dialogue with the occupying British colonialists in order to understand their side of the story.

Now, it is true that some white South Africans stood in solidarity with the oppressed black South Africans, and participated in the struggle against apartheid. And there were, to be sure, some British dissenters to their government's colonial policies. But those supporters explicitly stood alongside the oppressed with the clear objective of ending oppression, of fighting the injustices perpetrated by their governments and representatives. Any joint gathering of both parties, therefore, can only be morally sound when the citizens of the oppressive state stand in solidarity with the members of the oppressed group, not under the banner of "dialogue" for the purpose of "understanding the other side of the story." Dialogue is only acceptable when done for the purpose of further understanding the plight of the oppressed, not under the framework of having "both sides heard."

It has been argued, however, by the Palestinian proponents of these dialogue groups, that such activities may be used as a tool — not to promote so-called "understanding," — but to actually win over Israelis to the Palestinian struggle for justice, by persuading them or "having them recognize our humanity."

However, this assumption is also naive. Unfortunately, most Israelis have fallen victim to the propaganda that the Zionist establishment and its many outlets feed them from a young age. Moreover, it will require a huge, concerted effort to counter this propaganda through persuasion. For example, most Israelis will not be convinced that their government has reached a level of criminality that warrants a call for boycott. Even if they are logically convinced of the brutalities of Israeli oppression, it will most likely not be enough to rouse them into any form of action against it. This has been proven to be true time and again, evident in the abject failure of such dialogue groups to form any comprehensive anti-occupation movement ever since their inception with the Oslo process. In reality, nothing short of sustained pressure — not persuasion — will make Israelis realize that Palestinian rights have to be rectified. That is the logic of the BDS movement, which is entirely opposed to the false logic of dialogue.

Based on an unpublished 2002 report by the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last October that "between 1993 and 2000 [alone], Western governments and foundations spent between $20 million and $25 million on the dialogue groups." A subsequent wide-scale survey of Palestinians who participated in the dialogue groups revealed that this great expenditure failed to produce "a single peace activist on either side." This affirms the belief among Palestinians that the entire enterprise is a waste of time and money.

The survey also revealed that the Palestinian participants were not fully representative of their society. Many participants tended to be "children or friends of high-ranking Palestinian officials or economic elites. Only seven percent of participants were refugee camp residents, even though they make up 16 percent of the Palestinian population." The survey also found that 91 percent of Palestinian participants no longer maintained ties with Israelis they met. In addition, 93 percent were not approached with follow-up camp activity, and only five percent agreed the whole ordeal helped "promote peace culture and dialogue between participants."

Despite the resounding failure of these dialogue projects, money continues to be invested in them. As Omar Barghouti, one of the founding members of the BDS movement in Palestine, explained in The Electronic Intifada, "there have been so many attempts at dialogue since 1993 … it became an industry — we call it the peace industry."

This may be partly attributed to two factors. The dominant factor is the useful role such projects play in public relations. For example, the Seeds of Peace website boosts its legitimacy by featuring an impressive array of endorsements by popular politicians and authorities, such as Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, Shimon Peres, George Bush, Colin Powell and Tony Blair, amongst others. The second factor is the need of certain Israeli "leftists" and "liberals" to feel as if they are doing something admirable to "question themselves," while in reality they take no substantive stand against the crimes that their government commits in their name. The politicians and Western governments continue to fund such projects, thereby bolstering their images as supporters of "coexistence," and the "liberal" Israeli participants can exonerate themselves of any guilt by participating in the noble act of "fostering peace." A symbiotic relationship, of sorts.
SOURCE: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10722.shtml

The lack of results from such initiatives is not surprising, as the stated objectives of dialogue and "coexistence" groups do not include convincing Israelis to help Palestinians gain the respect of their inalienable rights. The minimum requirement of recognizing Israel's inherently oppressive nature is absent in these dialogue groups. Rather, these organizations operate under the dubious assumption that the "conflict" is very complex and multifaceted, where there are "two sides to every story," and each narrative has certain valid claims as well as biases.

As the authoritative call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel makes plain, any joint Palestinian-Israeli activities — whether they be film screenings or summer camps — can only be acceptable when their stated objective is to end, protest, and/or raise awareness of the oppression of the Palestinians.

Any Israeli seeking to interact with Palestinians, with the clear objective of solidarity and helping them to end oppression, will be welcomed with open arms. Caution must be raised, however, when invitations are made to participate in a dialogue between "both sides" of the so-called "conflict." Any call for a "balanced" discourse on this issue — where the motto "there are two sides to every story" is revered almost religiously — is intellectually and morally dishonest, and ignores the fact that, when it comes to cases of colonialism, apartheid, and oppression, there is no such thing as "balance." The oppressor society, by and large, will not give up its privileges without pressure. This is why the BDS campaign is such an important instrument of change.

Faris Giacaman is a Palestinian student from the West Bank, attending his second year of college in the United States.

Source: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10722.shtml

Ramadan in Gaza

freepaliadmin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:05:00 GMT

BY: SALEM EL-RAYYES

Gaza, August 21, 2009 In the market, sellers can be heard urging buyers to purchase goods before the start of the holy month of Ramadan. Goods to be purchased would be very little, if not for those which pass through the tunnels. Those that do line the shelves and tables are outrageously expensive, with only a few being able to afford the prices. Even the start of Ramadan will not motivate Gazans to purchase goods. The cause is the rise in poverty, which is a product of the continuing siege on Gaza.

High prices

Abu Hassan, an owner of a vegetable store in the corner market of Gaza City, attributes the rise in prices to the siege. "There is a rise in the prices of vegetables and fruits in this season, as a result of the Israeli siege on Gaza Strip and the high cost charged to farmers. Although it is the third time for us to spend Ramadan under siege, sales are down by 60% compared to those over the last three years."

"The market is in a recession, despite the approaching of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan," said Abu Alam, an owner of a butchers shop. "The price of meat is three times higher than the past years due to Israel not permitting it to pass through the borders."

According to Atef, a tool cleaning vendor, the high prices are from the lack of access to goods coming from the Israeli crossing points, the prohibition on what can enter, and those which come through the tunnels. Goods would not be coming through the tunnels, if Israel did not prohibit their entrance or restrict the level of foodstuff. Confounding the problem of high prices is low income. It is therefore not surprising that there is an absence of consumers. The people are suffering.

Suffering

With the suffering, many ponder how to feed their families. "We have never seen these high prices, low income and level of unemployment such as this year; we must but what is necessary and ignore everything else. It is too hard for us and we don't know how we will go on," says Abu Samir, a father of five and a grandfather of nine. Hossam, a father of three sons, wonders how he can feed his children. Parents are not the only ones suffering.

Youth also have issues that exacerbate their own suffering. Ahmed, who should be finished preparing to marry, is shocked and confused by the high the prices and low incomes. "Sometimes I regret thinking about getting married because of the situation. I don't know how people can afford their lives." The collapse of the economy is adding additional burdens to the lives of the young and old.

Economic collapse

The Gaza Strip is collapsing economically because of tightened siege. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, "the economic collapse in the Gaza Strip is as a result of the Israeli siege, which has led the unemployment rate to increase by 44% since April 2009. This is a huge increase in the percentage of poverty, with 70% of the population living in poverty and on 30 dollars a month." How could any individual live on such a small amount? How can one consider getting married or starting a family? How can one even have a future?

As Ramadan approaches, Palestinians living in Gaza will be struggling with high prices, unemployment and suffering. They will be worrying how to fed their families and survive from one day to the next.

What We Palestinians Need

freepaliadmin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:00:00 GMT

BY: MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI

Irrespective of what political settlement is ultimately embraced, Palestinians need a unified strategy for confronting and overcoming Israeli racism, apartheid and oppression. Mustafa Barghouthi* outlines the basis of such a strategy

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Palestinians have only two choices before them, either to continue to evade the struggle, as some have been trying to do, or to summon the collective national resolve to engage in it.

The latter option does not necessarily entail a call to arms. Clearly Israel has the overwhelming advantage in this respect in both conventional and unconventional (nuclear) weapons. Just as obviously, neighbouring Arab countries have neither the will nor ability to go the military route. However, the inability to wage war does not automatically mean surrender and eschewing other means to wage struggle.

As powerful as it is militarily, Israel has two major weak points. Firstly, it cannot impose political solutions by force of arms on a people determined to sustain a campaign of resistance. This has been amply demonstrated in two full-scale wars against Lebanon and, most recently, in the assault against Gaza. Secondly, the longer the Palestinians have remained steadfast, and the greater the role the demographic factor has come to play in the conflict, the more clearly Israel has emerged as an apartheid system hostile to peace. If the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the colonialist expansionism describe the circumstances surrounding the birth of the Israeli state, the recent bills regarding the declaration of allegiance to a Jewish state and prohibiting the Palestinian commemoration of the nakba more explicitly underscore its essential racist character.

Ironically, just as Israel has attained the peak in its drive to fragment the Palestinian people, with geographical divides between those in Israel and those abroad, between Jerusalem and the West Bank and the West Bank and Gaza, and between one governorate and the next in the West Bank by means of ring-roads, walls and barriers, Palestinians have become reunified in their hardship and in the challenges that confront them. Regardless of whether or not they bear Israeli citizenship, or whether they are residents of Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza, they all share the plight of being victims of Israel's systematic discrimination and apartheid order.

If the only alternative to evading the struggle is to engage in it in order to resolve it, we must affirm that our national liberation movement is still alive. We must affirm, secondly, that political and diplomatic action is a fundamental part of managing the conflict, as opposed to an alternative to it. In fact, we must elevate it to our primary means for exposing the true nature of Israel, isolating it politically and pressing for international sanctions against it.

In this context, we must caution against the theory of building state institutions under the occupation. An administration whose security services would be consuming 35 per cent of the public budget, that would be acting as the occupation's policeman while furthering Netanyahu's scheme for economic normalisation as a substitute for a political solution, is clearly geared to promote the acclimatisation to the status quo, not change. Building Palestinian governing institutions and promoting genuine economic development must occur within the framework of a philosophy of "resistance development". Such a philosophy is founded on the dual principles of supporting the people's power to withstand the hardships of the occupation and reducing dependency on foreign funding and foreign aid. The strategic aim of the Palestinian struggle, under this philosophy, must be to "make the costs of the Israeli occupation and its apartheid system so great as to be unsustainable".

If we agree on this course for conducting the struggle, then the next step is to adopt a unified national strategy founded upon four pillars:

1. Resistance. In all its forms, resistance is an internationally sanctioned right of the Palestinian people. Under this strategy, however, it must resume a peaceful, mass grassroots character that will serve to revive the culture of collective activism among all sectors of the Palestinian people and, hence, to keep the struggle from becoming the preserve or monopoly of small cliques and to promote its growing impetus and momentum. Models for this type of resistance already exist. Of particular note is the brave and persistent campaign against the Separation Wall, which has spread across several towns and villages, offered five lives to the cause, and become increasingly adamant. The resistance by the people of East Jerusalem and Silwan against Israeli home demolitions and the drive to Judaise the city presents another heroic model. Yet a third promising example is to be found it the movement to boycott Israeli goods and to encourage the consumption of locally produced products. In addition to preventing the occupation power from milking the profits from marketing locally produced products, this form of resistance can engage the broadest swath of the population, from old to young and men and women, and revive the culture and spirit of communal collaboration. The campaigns to break the blockade against Gaza, as exemplified by the protest ships, the supply caravans and the pressures on Israel to lift its economic stranglehold, are another major type of resistance.

2. Supporting national steadfastness. The importance of this pillar is its focus on strengthening the demographic power of the Palestinian people so as to transform their millions into an effective grassroots force. It entails meeting their essential needs to enable them to remain steadfast in their struggle, and developing Palestinian human resources as the foundation for a strong and independent Palestinian economy. However, in order to achieve these aims the Palestinian Authority (PA) economic plan and budget must be altered in a way that pits their weight behind development in education, health, agriculture and culture, as opposed to squandering a third of the budget on security.

For example, the passage and immediate implementation of the bill for the national higher education fund would serve the educational needs of hundreds of thousands of young adults. In addition to elevating and developing the standards of university education, it would also work to sustain the impact of development aid and eventually reduce reliance on foreign support. The fund would also alleviate the school tuition burdens on more than 150,000 families, put an end to nepotism in the handling of student study grants and loans, and provide equal opportunity for academic advancement to all young men and women regardless of their financial circumstances. Equally innovative and dynamic ideas could be applied to other areas of education, or to stimulating the fields of public health, agriculture and culture with the overall aim of developing the educated, innovative and effective modern human resources needed to meet Palestinian needs as autonomously as possible and, hence, capable of weathering enormous pressures.

3. National unity and a unified national leadership. This strategic aim entails restructuring the Palestine Liberation Organisation on a more demographically representative basis and putting into effect agreements that have been previously reached in the Palestinian national dialogues held in Cairo. Over the past few years, the thrust of Israel's greatest advantage and the thrust of its assault centred around the Palestinian rift and the weakness of the disunited Palestinian leadership. In order to redress this flaw, the Palestinians must adopt a new mentality and approach. Specifically, they must: relinquish the mentality and practice of vying for power over an illusory governing authority that is still under the thumb of the occupation, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza; give up the illusion that Palestinian military might, however great it might become, is capable of leading the Palestinian struggle alone; adopt democracy and pluralistic democratic activities and processes as a mode of life, self-government, peaceful decision-making, and the only acceptable means to resolve our differences and disputes; resist all outside pressures and attempts (particularly on the part of Israel) to intervene in our internal affairs and to tamper with the Palestinian popular will. There must be a firm and unshakeable conviction in Palestinians' right to independent national self-determination.

The most difficult task that we face today is creating a unified leadership and strategy binding on all, from which no political or military decisions will depart, and within which framework no single group or party has a monopoly on the decision-making processes. Only with a unified leadership and strategy will we be able to fight the blockade as one, instead of evading unity for fear of the blockade. With a unified leadership and strategy we will able to seize the reins of initiative from others, as opposed to spinning from one reaction to the other, and we will be able to focus our energies on asserting our unified will instead of squandering them in internal power struggles in which the various parties seek outside assistance to strengthen their hand against their opponents on the inside. Only then will we be able to shift the equations that subordinated the national liberation movement to the narrow concerns of the PA (both in the West Bank and Gaza) and turn the PA into an instrument in the service of the national liberation movement.

4. Building and enhancing an international pro-Palestinian solidarity movement combined with a drive to impose sanctions against Israel. That such a movement already exists and is steadily growing is heartening. However, it will take enormous efforts to organise it and coordinate its activities properly so as to ensure it has the greatest possible influence upon decision-makers, especially in Europe and the West. Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities will need to be orchestrated towards the realisation of the same goals. If the solidarity movement has scored significant successes with the organisation of a boycott of Israeli products, the decision by the Federation of British Universities to boycott Israeli academics, and the decision taken by Hampshire College and some US churches to refuse to invest in Israel, much work has yet to be done to expand the scope of such activities and build up the momentum of the solidarity movement.

The Palestinian plight, which Nelson Mandela has described as the foremost challenge to the international humanitarian conscience, strongly resembles the state of South Africa at the outset to the 1980s. It took years of a concerted unified drive before the South African liberation movement finally succeeded in bringing around governments to their cause. The tipping point came when major companies realised that the economic costs of dealing with the apartheid regime in Pretoria were unsustainable. In the Palestinian case, the success of an international solidarity movement is contingent upon three major factors. The first is careful organisation and detailed planning, a high degree of discipline and tight coordination. Second is a rational, civilised rhetoric that refuses to play into Israel's tactics of provocation. The third is to address and recruit progressive movements and peoples in societies abroad, including anti-Zionist Jews and Jews opposed to Israeli policies.

None of the foregoing is new, by any means. However, these ideas have yet to be put into practice. The logical springboard for this is to operate on the principle that while the Palestinian cause is a Palestinian, Arab and Muslim one, it is above all a humanitarian cause that cries out to all in the world who cherish humanitarian principles and values. The success of the freedom fighters of South Africa, the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the campaigners for the independence of India stemmed primarily from their ability to forge a universal appeal. And this is precisely what we must do. Our mottos for the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people must be "the fight against the new apartheid and systematic racism" and "the fight for justice and the right to freedom." The International Court of Justice's ruling on the Separation Wall, the illegality of Jewish settlements and altering the face of Jerusalem is a valuable legal precedent that official Palestinian governing institutions have ignored for four years. This ruling should now become our platform for a drive to impose sanctions against Israel, just as the UN resolution against the occupation of Namibia proved a platform for mounting a campaign against the apartheid system in South Africa.

The four-pronged strategy outlined above, which is espoused by the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, can succeed if it is guided by a clear vision, patience, and systematic persistence. I do not expect that it win the approval of all. The interests of some combined with their sense of frustration and despair have deadened their desire to engage in or to continue the confrontation with Israel. We also have to acknowledge that certain sectors of Palestinian society have become so dependent upon interim arrangements and projects and the attendant finances as to put paid to the possibility of their contributing to the fight for real change. Yet, the proposed comprehensive strategy does respond to and represent the interests of the vast majority of the Palestinian people and holds the promise of a better future.

The Palestinian national struggle has so far passed through two major phases: the first steered by Palestinians abroad while ignoring the role of Palestinians at home, and the second steered by Palestinians at home while ignoring the role of Palestinians abroad. Today we find ourselves at the threshold of a third phase, which should combine the struggle at home and the campaign of Palestinians and their sympathisers abroad.

In closing I would like to address the subject of a one-state or a two-state solution. It is both theoretically and practically valid to raise this subject here for two reasons. First, Israel has consistently tried to undermine the prospect of Palestinian statehood by pressing for such formulas as home rule, or an interim state, or a state without real sovereignty. Second, the changes produced on the ground by Israeli settlements and ring roads have come to render the realisation of a viable state unrealisable. To some, especially Palestinians in the Diaspora, replacing the call for a one-state solution with calling for a "two-state solution" seems to offer a remedy that gives relief. It is a better remedy, without a doubt, but it is a long way from offering relief. Slogans do not end liberation struggles. Slogans without strategies and efforts to back them up remain nothing but idle wishes or, to some, a noble way to avoid responsibility and the work that goes with it.

Now, let us be clear here. Israel has been working around the clock to destroy the option of an independent Palestinian state on the ground and, hence, the two-state solution. But that does not leave the Palestinian people without an alternative, as some Zionist leaders undoubtedly hope. The single democratic state (not the single bi-national state) in which all citizens are equal in rights and duties regardless of their religious affiliations and their origins is an alternative to the attempt to force the Palestinians to accept slavery under occupation and an apartheid order in the form of a feeble autonomous government that is dubbed a state.

However, whether the aim is a truly independent sovereign state or a single democratic state, both of which Israel dismisses with equal vehemence, neither of these aims can be achieved without exposing and destroying the apartheid system. This requires a strategy. Therefore, instead of allowing ourselves to become divided prematurely over whether to go for the one-state or two-state solution, let us unify behind the common aim required to achieve either: the formulation and implementation of a strategy to fight the occupation, apartheid and racial discrimination. This will lead us to something that is absolutely necessary at this stage, which is to move from the world of slogans to the world of practical activism in accordance with viable strategic plans that mobilise demonstrators against the wall, intellectuals and politicians and other sectors of society. It is high time we realise that diplomatic endeavours and negotiations do not free us from the nuts and bolts of actual struggle. We have one road that leads to a single goal: the freedom of the Palestinian people. There is nothing nobler than to follow this road to its end. This is not a project for some point in the future; it is one that cannot wait. Indeed, we should probably adopt the slogan of the freedom fighters of South Africa: "Freedom in our lifetime!"

FATAH: A New Beginning or an Imminent End?

freepaliadmin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:30:00 GMT

BY: RAMZY BAROUD

This is hardly the rational order of things. An overpowering military occupation was meant to be resisted by an equally determined, focused and unyielding national movement, hell-bent on liberation at any cost and by any means. This is the unwritten law that has governed and shielded successful national liberation projects throughout history. The Fatah movement, under Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, wants to alter that order, meeting Israeli colonialism with ill-defined ‘pragmatism’, extreme violence with press statements laden with endless clichés that mostly go unreported, and a determined Israeli attempt at squashing Palestinian aspirations with political tribalism, factional decay and internal divisions.

Indeed, the long delayed Fatah Congress, held in Bethlehem on August 4 has underscored the obvious: the all-encompassing movement which was meant to exact and safeguard Palestinian national rights has grown into a liability that, if anything, will continue to derail the Palestinian national project. This comes at a time when the Palestinian people are in urgent need of a collective response that is strong enough to withstand Israeli military pressure and coercion at home, eloquent enough to communicate the Palestinian message to a global audience, and astute enough to galvanize international support and sympathy to the benefit of Palestinian freedom and independence.

But what we witnessed in Bethlehem was a bizarre manifestation of the discord of self-seeking and self-imposed elites vying for empty titles, worthless positions and hollow prestige. The mockery started when hundreds of additional delegates were invited to join in the already bloated number of Fatah members with the hopes that their presence would bolster the position of this factional leader or that. Oddly, the meeting place was occupied Bethlehem. The delegates of the ‘resistance’ movement must’ve passed through Israeli checkpoints and metal detectors to reach their meeting place and talk of hypothetical revolutions and imaginary resistance. Excluded were Fatah members who didn’t pass Israeli screening. Perhaps, they were not ‘revolutionary’ enough for Israeli taste.

Then the show started. One would hope to take an iota of pride in the fact that the delegates were not participants in a typical meet of conformists as is the case in ruling party conferences throughout the region. But this would be self-deceiving. The heated discussions which evolved into screaming matches, were of little relevance to the struggles and challenges facing the Palestinian people at home and abroad. It was not the plight of Gaza, nor the cause of the refugees, nor the best method of garnering international solidarity that invited the ire of most respected members. The disputes were most personal. A so-called younger generation trying to exact greater representation in the movement’s 21-strong Central Committee and the 120-member Revolutionary Council from the so-called Old Guard.

Many news reports reduced the ongoing turmoil in Fatah to sound bites and half-truths. The old recycled gibberish of ‘moderate’ Fatah was once more juxtaposed to ‘extremist’ Hamas; the latter’s violence with the former’s investment in a pretend ‘peace process’, those who want to live in peace, ‘side-by-side’ with Israel and those who want to ‘annihilate’ the Jewish State.

“Now the Palestinians – like the Israelis and the international backers of Fatah – are waiting to see the results,” reported the New York Times. True, but Palestinians were waiting for entirely different reasons.

Fatah has changed over the years. It started as a resistance movement of well-intended members, mostly students and young professionals in the 1950’s and 60’s. The young leadership was motivated by various factors, chief amongst them were the plight of the refugees, the lack of a truly independent Palestinian leadership and the failure of Arab governments to deliver on their promises to liberate Palestine. Resistance was in fact the core of Fatah’s liberation program.

One of the movement’s founders once wrote: “It was not only the experiences and the errors of our predecessors which helped guide our first steps. The guerrilla war in Algeria, launched five years before the creation of Fatah, had a profound influence on us. We were impressed by the Algerian nationalists’ ability to form a solid front, wage war against an army a thousand times superior to their own, obtain many forms of aid from various Arab governments, and at the same time avoid becoming dependent on any of them.”

Over the years, whether out of political of military necessity, internal divisions or any other factors, Fatah grew into a melting pot encompassing romantic revolutionaries and poets, wealthy elites and shifty politicians. It was a strange balance, but a balance nonetheless, which kept suspicious Palestinians hopeful that the revolutionary elements in Fatah would eventually prevail. But following Yasser Arafat’s signing of the Oslo Accord with Israel, in 1993, the millionaires and their dubious politician allies won, turning Fatah into a giant company, feeding on the empty rhetoric of ‘peace’, financed by international donors, and operated by the movement’s ‘pragmatic’ elements, who allied themselves with Israel to preserve their gains, however insignificant.

That is why “Palestinians (were) waiting”, perhaps with the hope that Fatah would once more revert to its founding principles, with a coherent national project, stipulating unity of purpose and clarity of aim. It was not that Palestinians were hungry for violent resistance and eager to blow things up, but they longed for a Fatah that would once more institute resistance as an idea, as a culture, with all of its manifestations, infused as necessary. They wanted Fatah to go back to the basics, own up to the struggle of its people, as opposed to the quisling rhetoric that turned Palestine into a collection of political tribes, each armed with NGO’s, newsletters and bloated bank accounts in various European capitals.

One wants to decry this shameful episode in the history of the Palestinian struggle, but one ought to remember that history has a way of repeating itself. The faltering Fatah that was once established to represent the aspirations of the downtrodden Palestinian refugees is now facing the same historical imperative that other failed movements have faced in the past. If Fatah fails to reclaim itself as a true national liberation movement, an umbrella that unites every facet of Palestinian society, then it will soon splinter and eventually dissolve, if not entirely disappear. But true challenge will remain; whether those who will carry the torch will learn from the “experiences and the errors of (their) predecessors.” Time will tell.

What is wrong with the Palestinians? A whole lot.

freepaliadmin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:56:00 GMT

BY: SAMI JAMIL JADALLAH

There is something very wrong with people who claim to be smart, intelligent, educated, hard working, honest, nationalists, and decent to accept such a stupid, corrupt, incompetent, reckless, useless leadership and organization for the last 45 years that failed at everything it set out to do -turning the PLO to a manager and contractor of the Jewish Occupation with leadership that at best can be described as self serving, racketeering mafia that made financial fortunes for itself and members of their families fleecing national treasury, while claiming to represent and lead the Palestinian people toward liberation and independence. The Palestinians remain under Occupation till now.

There is something very wrong with people who never held the leadership accountable for its failing, for lack of accountability and transparency, for the numerous disasters that befell the Palestinians in exile and under Occupation, where tens of billions wasted, tens of billions remain unaccounted for, where tens of thousands perished and died in the cause of liberation and where hundreds of thousands were exiled (Kuwait) and lost everything because of the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the leadership.

There is something wrong with people where “intellectuals” who are supposed to be the conscious of the nation and guardians of the people’s interests and rights collude with Arafat, the PLO and Fatah leadership and remained silent while witnessing firsthand the abuse of power and authority by Arafat, lack of collective leadership, lack of financial accountability, lack of holding the leadership and officers responsible for the many repeated failures. There is something wrong with intellectuals who became self serving of a system that corrupted their body and soul. Rather than standing up for the people’s rights, became a tool and apologists for a failed leadership. They simply sat on their face all these years while knowing the PLO and its leadership are nothing more than a lie, a fraud, bunch of crooks and thieves, unfit to lead let alone liberate. The failures and the mess we see today did not take place overnight. They were there years ago, when Arafat became the sole dictator, dispensing financial favors for loyalty, making sure that all those around him are “eunuchs” with no voice bought and sold with money and privilege and subordinated powers accepting personal insults and humiliations by the “Old Man”.

There is something wrong with a business community and leadership failed to dedicate its money, access to power to building a viable economy with professional and skilled jobs for the people it chose collusion with a corrupt and failed leadership, benefiting from the corrupt leadership of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority with rewards of monopolies and business opportunities that added billions to their wealth while the rest of the people could hardly have a decent job to live on. A business leadership that “cornered” wealth rather than “spreading” wealth, robbing average small entrepreneurs from business opportunities, becoming part of the mafia that is the Palestinian Authority.

There is something with leaders of so-called “civil societies” that rather than serving the general interest of the people and public became self serving of their own pockets accumulating substantial wealth from donations they get from foreign donors anxious to do some good for the miserable people of Palestine. So many leading names became corrupted by access to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and the business opportunities created through such relations that they became silent and blind, failing to speak out on corruption, incompetence, ineptness, abuse of power and authority, civil rights abuse, never speaking out for accountability and transparency in government and public service, muzzled by the dollars they get. To them the Occupation is a business, a big business.

There is something wrong with people and their so called representative (PNC) who never demanded any sort of accountability and who never held the leadership responsible for it failures and mistakes in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Tunis, in Kuwait. There is something wrong with people who failed to demand accountability and public inquiry into the many massacres committed against the Palestinian people in Tal-Zaater, in Sabra and Shatilla, in Jenin, in Hebron. Who would believe that Israel’s of Begin form a public and independent commission to hold hearing into the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla but says nothing about Palestinian leadership’s failures to hold a similar hearing? Something very wrong with such people and such leadership.

Who would believe that the leadership never made public accounting of the billions at its disposal, people’s money, with no accounting of SAMED Industries, no accounting of tens of billions of investments in Africa, in Europe, North America and the Middle East with no one knowing what happened to these tens of billions? And more troublesome is the deafening silence as they see and witness financial corruption and thefts of public funds on a daily basis.

Who would believe that Israel charges its hero and prime minister, Rabin, with failing to adhere to its laws limiting bank accounts of officials outside Israel, forcing him to resign yet accept Yasser Arafat's private and personal decision to transfer millions of dollars of the “people’s money” to the private accounts of his wife so she can enjoy the high standard of living in Paris. Israel dismisses its prime minister over few thousand dollars while the Palestinians worship a man who robbed them blind and failed them.

Who would believe the Palestinian accept a leader who agrees and accept hundreds of millions transferred into his personal and private account, money collected by Israel from taxes it collects on Palestinian imports, rather than having all the funds going to the people’s treasury? Who would accept but Palestinians their leaders to have public money deposited into private accounts of their leader’s entrusted to retired Mossad agents and crooked bankers in France and in Switzerland? Why Israel punishes its leaders for keeping several thousands of dollars in foreign accounts, yet the Palestinians do not demand to know where are the billions hidden and lost in the private accounts of Arafat.

Who would believe that there are so many traitors, informers and collaborators working for and on behalf of the occupying enemy making it very possible for Israel to target and assassinate key leadership such as Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, Engineer Abuy-Ayash and many many more resistance fighters gunned downed in cold blood based on information and intelligence provided by members with Hamas and Fatah? Who would believe there are tens of thousands of such collaborators and informers within the highest levels of government of Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Authority to the drivers of the donkey carts in the streets of Gaza or Nablus?

Who would believe that Palestinians accept, say nothing and do nothing about having to wait for hours and days, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions at more than 650 security checkpoints while more than 3,000 VIPs of Fatah, PLO and Palestinian Authority speed through these Israeli security points? One has to wonder what kind of people the Palestinians are made of and what kind of a leadership that negotiate for itself such privilege while the people its suppose to represent languish for hours and days at these humiliating and degrading security checkpoints with so many women, sick and very young dying while waiting to go through. I am sure the leadership is very proud of its achievements for itself. It never cared about the people when in Beirut, Tunis and now Ramallah.

One has to wonder what kind of people that accept a leadership that promised liberation for 45 years, only to come back as manager and partner with the occupation. A leadership that continues to meet and negotiate while Israel continues to expropriate and steal more and more land for its settlements, while settlers are terrorizing village and destroying farms, with some 70,000 Palestinians under virtual 25 hours curfew in Hebron and does nothing to chase this leadership out of Ramallah? Abbas’s partner Olmert succeeded to build 2,500 housing units in settlements, 400 Km of the Apartheid Wall, while Abbas, Saeb, Quari and Abed-Rabou were having regular visits and drinks with Olmert, Livni and Barak. They even met with these killers and murderers after the war on Gaza. Who would believe that leaders from around the world make the efforts to visit Gaza to see the devastation caused by the Palestinian Authority negotiating partners yet not Abbas, not one single leaders of the Ramallah authority bothers to make the efforts to visit Gaza?

Who would believe that Palestinians accept the lies of both Hamas and Fatah as they talk of liberation when the only thing they are interested in is “who gets what of the financial pie” that is the Jewish Occupation? Who would believe the lies of Hamas that it is Israel that detonated a truck load of explosive during a “Resistance Ceremony” killing some 40 innocent people and lies about its reckless and irresponsible behavior and total disregards of the people’s safety and security as it parked the loaded truck next to the people?

Who would believe that a leadership like Hamas turns the absolute and honorable right to resist and fight the occupation including armed means, into an act of ‘terror” through the reckless, irresponsible and immoral use of “suicide bombings” that kills innocent people, yes innocent people in cafes, buses and restaurants and turned resistance into a self serving business, with families celebrating the death of a son in a suicide mission rather than celebrating his or her life and graduation from college, making families accept “blood money” from such killers and murderers like Saddam. It is one thing to carry a gun and shoot and kill an Israeli soldiers or an armed settler in the Occupied Territories, it is another thing to murder people on a bus in Tel-Aviv. Hamas leadership blurred the lines between what is right and what is wrong, and what is honorable and legitimate resistance and acts of terror. Hamas reckless behavior and leadership deprived the Palestinians from such a noble right to fight and resist the Occupation. Hamas failed to liberate and managed to pull the rugs and legitimacy from underneath legitimate armed resistance.

Who would believe that smart and intelligent people believe that the useless worthless Qassam rockets will liberate Gaza and that Hamas fighters will defend the people of Gaza when in fact such irresponsible resistance managed to kill not more than a dozen Israel soldiers while Israel managed to destroy some 30,000 homes made more than 500,000 homeless and killed some 1,800? Where is the smart intelligent resistance? Certainly it is not in Gaza. Why does Hamas leadership put the fate and lives of millions of people in the hands of reckless, irresponsible resistance fighters and fails to take charge and fails to take responsibility for its failed strategy?

One has to wonder what kind of people the Palestinians are for accepting the daily abuse and misuse of power and authority by the Palestinian Authority Security Forces with a mission to protect the soldiers and settlers of the Occupation, retreating to its barracks when the Israeli army decided to carry out a military operation or an assassination, leaving the Palestinians without any security or safety and open to Israeli fire?

Who would believe that people who suffered for so long under occupation with more than 700,000 spending time in Israel jails since 67, tens of thousands dead at the hands of the Jewish Occupation accept the abuse and criminal behavior of Arafat’s Preventive Security Forces in Gaza and the West Bank where more Palestinians died in its jails than those who died in Israel’s jails? Who would believe that Palestinians accept and remain silent while Arafat and his cronies turned the Preventive Security Forces into a mafia, racketeering and protection organizations for its leadership and officers accumulating millions in the process? Who would believe that the leadership and commanders of the Preventive Security Forces, during the shameful and criminal commands of Dahlan and Rajoub, of course with the blessings of Arafat, and who acted so tough and rough subjecting average Palestinians to torture, physical and verbal abuse are rewarded with promotions as they ran away scared, abandoning their posts before the advancing Israeli forces leaving behind their staff and political prisoners locked behind bars? Fulfilling the old saying “assadon alaya wa fel hurubi na’amatun” Loins when it comes to me but an ostrich when it comes to war and enemy.

It is difficult to believe how the PLO leadership of the last 45 years turned and transformed the Palestinian people from a nation and people dedicated to education, hard work with ambitions to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, industrialists and teachers and turned them into unskilled laborers for Israeli market killing their hopes and ambition to have a university degree. Young people now can look forward to joining gangs, joining “Sulta” and join the Palestinian Authority and becomes a security officer or a functionary, dedicated to protecting the Authority, the leadership and the Jewish Occupation?

It is even more difficult to accept the utter silence, bordering on cowardliness where people fails to rise up against such an Authority where more than 80% of the people are below poverty line while the elites; the “returning” leadership enjoys million dinars homes, luxurious cars with drivers for themselves, their wives and mistresses, spending thousand of dinars on dinner and drinks enough to feed several families for a month.

Never understood how brave individuals who faced Israeli tanks and guns with stones and rocks, could become a nations of cowards failing to take up the challenge of popular sustainable and persistent uprising against the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Fatah and against the Israeli Jewish Occupation that lasted some 42 years? Why are the people so brave before Israeli guns and tanks yet do not take the challenge and march on Ramallah and Gaza and chase the leadership out of office and out of the country?

It is also not so surprising that the Palestinian people accepted the role of refugees, living in miserable camps, with open sewers, waiting for the end of the month to collect their rations of dry milk, flour, and cooking oil from UNRWA rather than take the challenge taking over such services themselves. No wonder the Palestinian people and leadership became a nation of beggars, “shahadeen”with no self respect and dignity and a leadership of thieves. Too bad for the Palestinian people after being the model of well educated hard working intelligent people they became the laughing stock of the Arabs, and the world. Thanks to such a self serving corrupt incompetent inept leadership of thugs, thieves and collaborators. Never seen a case where a leadership not only failed to liberate but succeed in destroying a people and a dream. Thank you Yasser Arafat, thank you Mahmoud Abbas, thank you Ahmed Qurai, thank you Farouk Qadoumi, thank you Saeb Eurikat, thank you Yasser Abed-Rabou, thank you Mohamed Dahlan, thank you Jibril Rajoub, thank you Tayeb Abdul-Raheem, thank you Khalid Mishaal, thank you Hakam Balawi and thank you Azzam Al-Ahmed, thank you all for succeeding where Israel failed. For and on behalf of more than 7 million people for your successful dedicated leadership. We deserve you, as you deserve us.

Football game or tear gas and bullets? Palestinians put racist ad to test

freepaliadmin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:10:00 GMT

The row over a racist advert of Cellcom - an Israeli mobile phone operator, which shows Israel Occupation Forces soldiers playing football with Palestinians on both sides of the Apartheid Wall, continues.

In the Cellcom advert, IOF soldiers on patrol along the Wall stop their army jeep when it is hit by a soccer ball from the Palestinian side of the Wall. A game ensues, back and forth with the unseen Palestinians after a soldier dials up "reinforcements," including two smiling women in uniform, to come and play.

The advertisement made by McCann Erickson, part of U.S. Interpublic Group, ends with the upbeat voiceover: "After all, what are we all after? Just a little fun."

The advert has been extensively criticized for making light of the Palestinian suffering inflicted by the West Bank Apartheid Wall.

The Palestinians put controversial ad to test. A video recently posted on YouTube has tried to reenact the game in reality, and found that the result could not be further removed from the situation on the ground: when the Palestinians kick the ball to the other side of the Wall, what they get in return is a salvo of tear gas grenades and bullets.

Protesters in Bilin tested the "fun" claimed by Cellcom to find that it "smells" and can "kill you" if you play it with Israelis.

One of the activists in Bil'in said: "We wanted to show everyone how the soldiers really behave, contrary to what was shown in the ad. This is a message from the protestors on what really goes on at the separation fence – this is what we get from the soldiers, tear gas."

The Israeli ad prompted Arab lawmakers in Israel to demand it be taken off air. MK Ahmed Tibi called to scrap this television commercial.

What the Israelis sees as "Just a little fun" is actually an Apartheid Wall that separates families and prevents children from reaching schools and clinics, yet the advertisement presents the Wall as though it were just a garden fence in Tel Aviv.

Cellcom, however, has remained defiant and stood by the commercial.

"We are a communications company that facilitates human interaction," they said. "We don't deal with politics. We've had very positive feedback about the advert. There was absolutely no cynical intention behind it."

The ad went out during the same week as Palestinians marked the fifth anniversary of a World Court ruling that Israel's walls and fences in the West Bank were illegal.

Hagai Matar, an Israeli activist, said that the violent atmosphere near the fence was far from resembling the pastoral, pleasant atmosphere reflected in the Cellcom advert.

"While the people of Bilin suffer from frequent and repeated harassments by the army, while the residents are subjected to nightly arrests, violence and tear gas, not only during rallies but also in their yards, the people of Bilin continue to use amusing and creative ways to protest the separation fence," he said.

I got really too nauseous watching the ad. You see the Israeli occupation forces playing with ?!… the people that they are incarcerating behind the Apartheid Wall. But the most grotesque and disgusting part of this TV ad is the fact that the Palestinians basically aren't seen. Why? Because they are not there waiting for the football, but for … This ad correctly portray the occupation as monsters or aliens … This is the alienation that Israeli society feels toward the Palestinian people. In reality, if a Palestinian comes close to the Apartheid Wall to return a football … he is likely to get shot.

Cellcom should take this racist commercial off the air immediately and appologies for the Palestinian people. Refusing to do so only confirms the fact that racism is a culture that is widely adopted, believed and practiced in Israel.

Time to Talk about the Rise of Jewish Crime?

freepaliadmin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:01:00 GMT

BY: GILAD ATZMON

"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.

Hamas and Fatah "categorically reject" USA proposals that ignore ROR

freepaliadmin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:30:00 GMT

Palestinians are waiting to return home

Jerusalem – Ma’an News Agency, 20 July 2009 Senior Hamas and Fatah officials stated their objections on Sunday to what they said were US suggestions that Palestinians accept a land swap with Israel and give up the right of return.

The officials said that the US is pushing for a final status agreement with Israel that does not include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and maintains so-called Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank.
Senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, who deals with Jerusalem issues, said “the United States is trying to deceive the Palestinians through these proposals, which they think are creative, but [exist] only in their imaginations.” He called for the US to take concrete steps to stop Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements as an alternative.

The official said, “If the United States cannot take small steps in this direction, then how it can make these big leaps that will not be accepted by the Palestinians?”
“The main challenge for this administration is to stop the settlements and land confiscation, particularly canceling the Israeli decision to confiscate 139,00 dunums [of land along the Dead Sea shores and to stop the settlement plans in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.”
If the US takes these “basic steps,” it could lead to “real peace,” he said. He also said that Palestinians refugees cannot give up the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel, basing their claim on UN Resolution 194. “Going around [Resolution 194] will not lead to real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”
Meanwhile Hamas senior official Salah Bardawil said that “the issue of land swap was proposed since the Camp David negotiations … President Yasser Arafat rejected this at the time then and paid his life as a price for this rejection.”

Bardawil also said “We cannot accept anything that is proposed by the Americans regarding this issue.” He said “all Palestinian factions” believe that a resolution to the conflict should be based on an Israeli withdrawal from the land it occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the creation of a Palestinian state, and the realization of the right of return.

He also stated Hamas’ “categorical rejection” of the alleged American proposals. “It’s a waste of time for the US administration headed by [Barack] Obama to begin its political maneuvers with a rejected argument.”

How Israel torpedoed its ceasefire with Hamas

freepaliadmin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:21:00 GMT

BY: DAVID MORRISON

“Success is freeing the civilian population of southern Israel from the fear of an incoming Hamas rocket.” [1]

Those were the words of Israeli spokesman, Mark Regev, in an interview with David Fuller on More4 News on 9 January 2009, two weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza.

By 9 January, Israeli forces had killed nearly a thousand Palestinians, ostensibly to achieve this success, but rockets were still being fired out of Gaza into Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian groups – and continued to be fired after Israel halted the assault ten days later.

In fact, Israel had achieved the success of “freeing the civilian population of southern Israel from the fear of an incoming Hamas rocket” months earlier. It did so, not by taking military action against Hamas, but by negotiating a ceasefire agreement with it in June 2008.

Under the agreement, brokered by Egypt, in exchange for Hamas and other Palestinian groups stopping the firing of rockets and mortars out of Gaza, Israel undertook to lift its economic blockade of Gaza and cease military incursions into Gaza. The ceasefire was to be for six months initially, but, if successful, it was to be renewed and to apply to the West Bank as well.

What is more, Hamas stuck rigidly to the ceasefire agreement, and fired no rockets or mortars out of Gaza into Israel from 19 June, when the ceasefire came into operation, until 4 November. Other Palestinian groups fired a small number, despite being restrained by Hamas. As a partner for peace, Hamas could not be faulted – it made a deal with Israel and stuck to it.

Mark Regev confirmed the ceasefire’s “success” on More4 News on 9 January. When David Fuller put to him that “there were no Hamas rockets during the ceasefire before November the 4th, there were no Hamas rockets for 4 months”, Regev replied: “That’s correct”.

How did the success evaporate?

So, how did the success of “freeing the civilian population of southern Israel from the fear of an incoming Hamas rocket” from June to November evaporate? Answer: on 4 November 2008, Israel took action that caused it to evaporate. Israel broke the terms of the ceasefire agreement by making a military incursion into Gaza and killing 7 members of Hamas. This was the first military incursion into Gaza since the ceasefire began on 19 June.

Israel had now breached both of its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, having already failed to lift the economic blockade of Gaza as promised. In retaliation, Hamas resumed rocket and mortar fire out of Gaza into Israel.

There is no doubt that the Israeli government knew (a) that the military incursion into Gaza on 4 November would mean that the civilian population of southern Israel would no longer be free from Hamas rockets, and (b) that, if it continued to refrain from military incursions into Gaza, as it had done from 19 June, the civilian population of southern Israel would be free from Hamas rockets indefinitely. In other words, it chose course (a) in the full knowledge that civilians in southern Israel would be less safe.

Providing justification

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Israel made this choice, because it wanted a justification that could be sold to the world for launching the military assault on Gaza that began on 27 December. The assault could not have been launched before 4 November, when the civilian population of southern Israel were free from Hamas rockets. To justify a ferocious military assault in the name of “freeing the civilian population of southern Israel from the fear of an incoming Hamas rocket”, there had to be some. Is there any doubt that Israel chose course (a) in order to provide some?

David Fuller put it to Mark Regev that “the civilians of southern Israel are less safe now than before you started operations”. Regev replied:

“The civilians of southern Israel fully support this operation and you know why: because they’ve been living under the threat of incoming Hamas rockets, not for days, not for weeks, but for months, but for years. We’re trying to create a new security environment in which they no longer have to live in constant fear of an incoming Hamas rocket.”

That omits the very important fact that, for four and a half months from June to November 2008, the civilians of southern Israel were NOT living under the threat of incoming Hamas rockets, and that, if Israel had refrained from making a military incursion into Gaza on 4 November, they would have continued to be free from the threat of incoming Hamas rockets.

Tzipi Livni’s big lie

The Israeli town of Sderot, situated about a kilometre from the north-east corner of Gaza, has been the target for many of the rockets fired out of Gaza. The Israeli authorities brought many visitors, including Barack Obama, the future US President, to Sderot to see the damage done by these rockets and to bolster their case for taking military action to counter them.

On 31 December 2008, a few days after Israel launched its military assault on Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, went to Sderot and declared:

“Last Saturday [27 December] at 11:30, Israel started its military operation in the Gaza Strip – there was no other alternative. For eight years now, Israel has been under attack from the Gaza Strip and it has become worse. Hamas, which is an extreme Islamic organization, a terrorist organization, … has been targeting Israel on a daily basis.” [2]

Tzipi Livni was telling a big lie, when she said “there was no other alternative”. There was an alternative, which worked well from 19 June to 4 November, as the following account of life in Sderot in October illustrates:-

Israeli town celebrates end to daily rocket

TheStar.com - Columnist - Israeli town celebrates end to daily rocket fire. Besieged residents of Sderot relieved at quiet start to Yom Kippur, thanks to the ceasefire with Hamas.

Toronto Star, October 09, 2008 [3]
Oakland Ross
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

SDEROT, Israel–Young boys horsed around on their bicycles, families hurried to make last-minute purchases at the downtown supermarket, and food stands did a steady business in shawarma and beer.

Meanwhile, the October sun sparkled down from a blue and rocket-free sky.

If this seems like an unremarkable description of any Israeli town about to mark the holy day of Yom Kippur, it almost could be – except for that part about rockets.

Just a kilometre from the Gaza Strip, this southern Israeli town has been struck by an average of three missiles a day for each of the past seven years – and that is a long way from what most people would consider normal.

Lately, however, the cloudless firmament over Sderot has been mostly free of deadly ordnance, and the community is doing its best to resemble what for a long time it has singularly failed to be – a halfway normal town.

For seven years, local residents barely went out at all. But, late last June, under Egyptian mediation, the Israeli government reached a ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Since then, with only a few violations, the rocket salvoes from Gaza have stopped.

So have the punitive Israeli military incursions into the neighbouring strip – attacks that had been a frequent and deadly feature of Palestinian existence prior to the laying down of arms in June.

Less than a month later, on 4 November, Israel broke the ceasefire and, as a result, the near rocket-free days that Sderot had enjoyed since 19 June ended.

Key facts indisputable

The key facts about the ceasefire are indisputable.   They are confirmed in reports by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center [ITIC], reports that are publicly available on the Center’s website [4] and are used extensively by the Israeli Government.

For example, a report entitled The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement [5], written on 17 December 2008, just before the 6-month ceasefire agreement was due to expire, summarises its effect as follows:

“The lull arrangement brought relative quiet to the western Negev population and the Gaza Strip, especially during its first months, but it did not completely end the rocket and mortar shell attacks.” (paragraph 3)

The report makes no attempt to hide the fact that the ceasefire worked well up to 4 November 2008 and that it was Israel’s military incursion into Gaza on that date which brought it to an end in all but name. Here’s what it says:

“An analysis of the situation on the ground indicates two distinct periods:

i) A period of relative quiet between June 19 and November 4: As of June 19, there was a marked reduction in the extent of attacks on the western Negev population. The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations, in some instance in defiance of Hamas (especially by Fatah and Al-Qaeda supporters). Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire. The IDF refrained from undertaking counterterrorism activities in the Gaza Strip, taking only routine defensive security measures along the border fence. Between June 19 and November 4, 20 rockets (three of which fell inside the Gaza Strip) and 18 mortar shells (five of which fell inside the Gaza Strip) were fired at Israel.

ii) The escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement, November 4 to the time of this writing, December 17: On November 4 the IDF carried out a military action close to the border security fence on the Gazan side to prevent an abduction planned by Hamas, which had dug a tunnel under the fence to that purpose. Seven Hamas terrorist operatives were killed during the action. In retaliation, Hamas and the other terrorist organizations attacked Israel with a massive barrage of rockets.” (paragraph 4)

So, the ITIC confirms that from 19 June to 4 November “Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire” and that the relatively small number of ceasefire violations were “carried out by rogue terrorist organizations, in some instance in defiance of Hamas (especially by Fatah and Al-Qaeda supporters)”.

The ITIC also confirms that Israeli forces entered Gaza on 4 November and killed 7 members of Hamas and that the subsequent rocket fire by Hamas and other groups was “in retaliation”. Clearly, if Israeli forces hadn’t entered Gaza, there would have been no retaliation – and the population of the Western Negev would have continued to be free from Hamas rocket fire.

Another ITIC report, Escalation in the Gaza Strip justifies the Israeli incursion into Gaza by saying that the purpose of the tunnel was to abduct Israeli soldiers. One doesn’t have to be a military genius to know that, once the tunnel was discovered, there was no need to enter Gaza to prevent the abduction of soldiers on the Israeli side of the fence.

Decline of rocket and mortar firing

The rate of rocket and mortar firing declined dramatically from 19 June onwards, when the ceasefire came into force. The following bar chart from the ITIC report, Escalation in the Gaza Strip, illustrates the decline:

please write to author for this bar chart!!! It is not copying at the moment on the site (editors will try to insert again, but success is not guaranteed!)

According to the bar chart, 1,199 rockets were fired out of Gaza in the five and a half months in 2008 up to 19 June, that is, on average, more than 200 a month. By comparison, in the four and half months of the ceasefire from 19 June until 4 November, only 20 rockets in all were fired, that is, on average, less than 5 a month. In fact, the rate of firing fell by 98%.

(The equivalent decline for mortar shells is 1,072 to 17, that is, on average, 180 a month to around 4 a month. Again, the rate of firing also fell by 98%).

Note also that the number of violations of the ceasefire declined as time went on – only one rocket and three mortars were fired in September, and two rockets and no mortars in October.

Clearly, up until 4 November, the ceasefire arrangements had been very successful in reducing the threat to Israeli civilians.

Return of near daily rockets

Hamas and other Palestinian groups continued firing rockets and mortars out of Gaza throughout Israel’s military assault on Gaza and afterwards.   Here is a picture of life in Sderot in mid-March:-

Israeli town copes with return of near daily rockets

In Sderot, Purim holiday fun masks stresses of rocket attacks from Gaza militants.

By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 14, 2009 edition [7]

SDEROT, ISRAEL

The very hour Chana Melul returned to Sderot with her three young boys, whom she'd taken on vacation up north to escape the front lines, the rockets were back.

Minutes after they set down their suitcases, a Qassam rocket launched from nearby Gaza landed about 50 yards from their apartment building. It crashed into a storage shed and blew apart the sidewalk that leads to the community center around the corner. The center includes a rocket-resistant theater, recently built to give kids and grownups living here a little stress-free entertainment.

But for Ms. Melul, a single mother, the disquiet never really goes away. …

Nearly two months after Israel and Hamas each declared unilateral cease-fires, they have yet to come to an official truce. …

In the meantime, the violent volleys continue. Several times a week, Israel strikes at smuggling tunnels and the Palestinian militants in Gaza it says are responsible for launching rockets. Hamas and other groups such as Islamic Jihad send several rockets and short-range missiles into Israel on an almost daily basis. …

Geographically, her closest neighbors are in northern Gaza, where houses have suffered destruction in the recent war that simply can't be compared to the damages done here by Qassam rockets.

Clearly, the near rocket-free conditions, which Sderot enjoyed prior to Israel breaking the ceasefire on 4 November, were not restored by Israel’s assault on Gaza. Israel killed more than 1,400 Palestinians (including over 400 women and children) in the assault and 13 Israelis, including 3 civilians, also died, but the end result was that Sderot was a less safe place than before Israel broke the ceasefire.

ITIC reports show that in the 2 months after 18 January, when Israel ceased major military operations, 95 rockets were fired out of Gaza. In other words, the rate of rocket firing was nearly 50 a month, which is over 10 times the rate during the four and a half months of the ceasefire .

Understandably, Israel didn’t complain very loudly about this continued firing, since doing so would have drawn attention to the fact that its military action had failed to suppress the capability of Hamas and other groups to fire rockets out of Gaza.

Tzipi Livni’s big lie

Israel claimed to be acting in self-defence when it launched its assault on Gaza on 27 December 2008. In the words of Tzipi Livni, there was “no other alternative” to combat attacks out of Gaza. That was a big lie: there was an alternative – the ceasefire, which from 19 June to 4 November had been very successful in reducing the threat to Israeli citizens, even though Israel didn’t lift its economic blockade of Gaza.

Clearly, from the point of view of keeping Israeli citizens safe, Israel’s assault on Gaza beginning on December 27 was totally unnecessary. All Israel had to do to maintain the relative calm of last September and October was to stick to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. It chose not to do so.

References:

[1] www.uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SILJxPTqjAM

[2] www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2008/FM_Livni_press_conference_IDF_operation_Gaza_31-Dec-2008.htm

[3] www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/514498

[4] www.terrorism-info.org.il/site/home/default.asp

[5] www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_e017.pdf

www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/ct_e011.htm

[7] www.csmonitor.com/2009/0314/p25s07-wome.html

www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/ipc_e039.pdf

Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address

freepaliadmin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:20:00 GMT

A friend sent me this youtube clip. It's quite interesting to observe true racism in it's finest form.....I wonder if Obama's policies and support of Israel would change if he saw this clip.

Please be aware that there is very bad language used by those being interviewed and therefore please be considerate to your sorroundings when watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxt9HwfPwPo