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

BY:  GILAD ATZMON

I am very lucky to be in America this week, to watch a place being transformed, to smell the refreshing scent of restored liberty, to glance at the euphoric rise of hope. When I visited America two years ago it was a different place. There was fear in the air, the country was terrorized by its own lethal retribution. The gigantic American flags that were waving from every corner had a rather threatening impact on me.  And now somehow, seeing exactly the same flags evokes sympathy and trust in me.

Three days ago, at 5 am, still in my London home, while waiting for the airport cab service, I caught Justin Webb’s BBC interview with President Obama. I will be honest and say, as much as I wanted to love Obama like the rest of humanity, I was very suspicious of the man. I remembered him rushing to appease AIPAC within minutes after he secured his Democratic Party nomination.   We all knew about his first appointee Emmanuel Rahm, we obviously learned quickly who Rahm was and what he was affiliated with. In case we failed to see it, we had Rahm’s father to remind us http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037256.html.    

And yet, at 5 am, waiting for the driver to knock on my front door, I was blown away by President Obama. I wasn’t prepared for it and I simply couldn’t believe my ears.  When asked about Iran’s nuclear project, this is was what President Obama had to say,  “What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations. On the other   hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing nuclear arms in the region.”

This didn’t leave much room for interpretation, Obama simply said ‘YES to nuclear energy, No to nuclear bomb.’ I, on my part, actually believe that an Iranian nuclear bomb is the necessary way forwards. It will deter and restrain the Israeli leadership that had been proving time after time that Israel is merciless and murderous beyond comparison. However, approving Iran’s legitimate right for nuclear energy was indeed the right move. It left the BBC interviewer in a state of confusion, he was probably as surprised as I was, he wasn’t sure whether Obama really meant what he said. He repeatedly challenged the President asking whether Iran could have the “right to reprocess energy?” Once again President Obama didn’t leave any room for doubt.  “We need,” he said,  “to reinvigorate a much broader agenda for nuclear nonproliferation - including the United States and Russia drawing down our stockpiles in very significant ways, to the extent that Iran feels that they are treated differently than anybody else. That makes them embattled.” Obama’s message was lucid and transparent. It was also an ethical and universal one. We are about to restore the belief in humanity and brotherhood. President Obama was there to remind us that the United State of America was founded upon the ideal that all are created equal. And this obviously applies to Iranians and Muslims (not just Jews and Christian Zionists).

Watching a world leader talking sense, thinking ethically and expressing himself eloquently is indeed a rare, refreshing event these days. After years of repulsive world hegemony invaded by Zionised Neocon war mongering a la Bush and Blair. After years of Western leaders dancing to Israeli cacophony composed and orchestrated by different types of repulsive Wolfowitzes, listening to Obama’s extended humanist cadenza was indeed music to my ears.

With Obama’s shift in my mind, I was looking forward to my trip to America.  In spite of the credit crunch inflicted on America by the enemy within, there is a scent of cheerfulness in the air.  As much as Bush and Blair failed to liberate the Iraqi people, the Americans have managed after all, to liberate themselves. They left the keys to the White House in the possession of a man, who at least verbally, is inspired by humanism and tolerance. They have elected an inspiring man of incredible intellectual esteem.  

I am now in America for a week. I am meeting hundreds of Palestinians and solidarity activists. I can definitely detect a level of genuine optimism, something I couldn’t even remotely feel two years ago. America is expressing some real fatigue of its Ziocon invaders. Not only have the Ziocons failed to achieve anything. It made Americans accomplices in a colossal crime, the Iraqi Holocaust that until now has cost more than 1,300,000 civilian lives.  It bought America some fierce enemies all over the world and if this is not enough, the financial meltdown is there to make sure that each American will pay in the coming decades a heavy personal price for both Wolfowitz’s wars and Greenspan’s speculative capitalistic financial models.
 
Being a lucky sod, I was here in America yesterday when President Obama delivered his landmark Cairo speech to the Muslim world. It is rather obvious that Obama and his team were doing their homework. It seems as if they manage to grasp what Islam stands for and what Jihad means in particular. Obama’s speech is immaculately structured to address the Islamic meaning of Jihad. By doing so, Obama assures America’s enemies that respect for Islam, to Allah and Muslims is indeed restored.

Unlike his shameless predecessor, who for some reason was sure that Islam and Fascism were one word, Obama and his team realise that Islam is actually all about Salam i.e., peace.  ‘Armed jihad is temporary in that it ends when the enemy ceases its aggression.’ Obama grasped also that Korea tells its followers to ‘move quickly to establish peace once the enemy seeks peace.’  Obama comprehended that America had been defeated in Iraq.  He realises that in Islam, ‘showing compassion to the enemy that has been defeated or in seeking peace is considered superior to achieving victory.’

Bearing it all in mind, Obama was ready for his Cairo platform. Launching his speech greeting the Islamic world with assalaamu alaykum he prepared the ground for an outstanding speech. “I am here to talk to you face to face. It is peace I am searching.”  Unlike the previous Zionised puppet, the current American president understands the notion of mutuality and respect.  

“You and us,” he told his billion and a half Muslim listeners, “share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
This is very interesting indeed, considering the fact that these are the exact qualities that the previous administration was lacking. Instead of justice and progress it was reactionary bigotry. Instead of tolerance and dignity it was overwhelmingly supremacist, chauvinist and Ziocentric.

Obama is brave enough to admit that in spite of  9/11 being an ‘enormous trauma’, “it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course.” Besides the fact that Obama confesses here that mistakes had been made, he also hints that actually the Bush administration and its Ziocon ideologists were in essentially Non American by nature for failing to understand the Americans ‘Ideals’. For many years we speak about the elementary de-Zionification of Israel. Surprisingly enough, the de-Zionification of America seems to be more likely.

It is clear that Obama is not yet ready to depart from his dedicated fundraisers. He still seems to be committed to the Zionist phantasmic narrative. In spite of the fact that Obama did not use the word ‘terror’ even once in his speech, he still seems to be committed to the Israeli cause and the ‘Israeli right to exist’ at the expense of others. “America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” Actually, I myself believe that it can be easily denied. In fact there is no rational reason for the Palestinians to be penalised for crimes committed against Jews by Europeans.

However, as much as Obama seems to succumb to the Zionist narrative, he doesn’t stop himself from the necessary equation between the Jewish Holocaust and the ongoing Palestinian holocaust that is committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people.

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust”, says the president, but he then continues, “on the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”

I think that this doesn’t leave a room for a doubt. President Obama seems to realise what is going on. He knows about the humiliation, he knows about the starvation, he knows about Israelis using WMDs against civilian population. He for the first time promises one billion and a half Muslims around the world that America will not turn its backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

Whether Obama keeps his promise time will tell, however, the fact that he allows himself to juxtapose the Holocaust and Gaza proves that he is a million years ahead of most Palestinian solidarity campaigners who are reluctant to engage in this necessary equation just to avoid offending one Jew or another.
I may allow myself to advise the President that he is slightly misinformed in regards to Palestinians and their rights and aspirations.   On top of ‘aspiration for dignity’, ‘opportunity’ and ‘a state of their own’, the Palestinians also have another fundamental legitimate right in their disposal, it is the right to return to their homes, villages, towns, lands, field and orchards. In short we call it ‘the right of return’.

Every Palestinian refugee holds such a legitimate right within his disposal. Not a single Palestinian leader will ever give this right away, and if this is not enough, not a single world leader has the authority to dismiss such a right. The right of return is a right that belongs exclusively to the very owner of the land, the Palestinian people themselves. It is not a political matter for anyone to give away this right collectively in the name of very many Palestinians. As one extremely clever Palestinian refugee pointed to me last night in Houston: “my land near Safad”, so he said, “is my land, and no one can negotiate its fate on my behalf. Neither a Palestinian leader nor any other world leader.” I admit, as simple as it is, I have never thought about it before. The right of return is not a political matter or subject for negotiation. Thus, it won’t be resolved politically. It is an elementary fundamental right that will be fulfilled, as long as it takes.

As much as I am inspired with Obama the intellectual, I do also realise that putting his ideology into practice may take some time. Obama should prove us that he knows how to translate his beautiful words into action.  It is rather clear that Obama is reluctant to put real pressure on the Jewish state. If it were down to me, I would give the Israelis a 24-hour ultimatum to lift the closure on Gaza. Would they fail to provide, I would call home my ambassador in Tel Aviv, I would immediately stop any form of financial and military aid to Israel, I would freeze Israeli assets for being a terrorist state, I would also start a rapid deportation of Israelis from America. But as it seems, at least momentarily, I am not Obama, I am just a non-elected monarch of the Gilad Atzmon & the Orient House Ensemble. President Obama, on the other hand, is the elected president of the American people, he may know what he is doing.

The president has still long way to go. And yet, President Obama has made a major step in the last few days. He is now marching America towards humanism. He reclaims the American ideology of liberty.  I salute the man, I salute the great intellect, I salute the humanist. Gladly I am to admit that God blessed America. But someone better take very good care of the safety of its president. He has some fierce and relentless enemies out there. And as we know, they do not stop in red!

 

BY:  MOHAMED KHODR

“The actions of some of our United States Zionists will eventually prejudice everyone against what they are trying to get done.  I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs.   When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.”

–President Harry Truman in a Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt (“Truman”, David McCullough, p. 598).   Although Truman is the one most directly responsible for the creation of Israel, he has now joined the Pantheon of “Anti-Semites”.

“Back in the 1950s, the frustrated Secretary of State John Foster Dulles unambiguously stated: We cannot have all our policies made in Jerusalem. ” To the owner of Time Inc. Henry Luce he said: “I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by the Jews. [But] I am going to try to have one. This does not mean I am anti-Jewish, but I believe in what George Washington said in his farewell address, that an emotional attachment to another country should not interfere.”

            –B. R. Gowani, “The Lobby as Juggernaut”, Counterpunch, September 1, 2008

 
A.I.P.A.C.: American Israel Public Affairs Committee

According to the New York Times, April 26, 1998, article, “For 47 Years, a Lobby Group With Muscle Has Tirelessly Tended U.S.-Israel Ties.”

“Of all the Jewish organizations devoted to channeling that popular opinion into American policy, there is none so influential — or so feared — as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC.”

AIPAC’s main influence and domination is in Congress although it certainly impacts all levels of the U.S. Government.  Its main concern is U.S. foreign policy vis à vis Israel, the Middle East, and the Muslim world in general.   It has succeeded for decades in preventing the development of any good relations between the Arab, Muslim world and the U.S.   It focuses primarily on diplomatic, military, and financial aid to Israel as well as forcing the adoption of Israel’s enemies as America’s enemies so that what’s good for Israel is automatically good for America; yet if all of that is true, why have a lobby?

The very word AIPAC strikes the deepest fear and intimidation into the very souls of every American politician from the smallest town in America to the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.   This lobby for decades has demonstrated its power in electing subservient Congressmen and destroying those who dare speak against Israel.  Every new Congressmen gets a crash course on how to respond when AIPAC calls, or else.   It indoctrinates our politicians through what it calls “educational trips” to Israel, all expenses paid.   It trains Jewish interns and staffers to join Congressional offices.   It has a national network of stealth political action committees (PAC’s) in every state ready to donate campaign money to the pandering politician, attack Israel’s opponents, rapidly respond to any hint of criticism of divine Israel, provide staffers to Governors and State Legislatures, and have media savvy spokespersons dominate media reporting.

AIPAC holds an annual conference in Washington D.C. where one half to three fourths of all members of Congress are obliged to attend.    The President, Vice President, Cabinet officers, Supreme Court Justices, as well as Israel’s Prime Minister are usually in attendance.   Candidates for higher office compete to present their devotional commitment to Israel for Jewish money and media support.     AIPAC has annual themes meant to be adopted as governmental policy, recall the devastation of Iraq; and now the agenda has shifted to Iran.

For this annual conference (May 3-5, 2009) AIPAC provided a private jet to Shimon Peres, President of Israel, to travel within the U.S. while attending AIPAC’s annual conference.    According to Haaretz, May 12, 2009, Odit Sirkis, the legal counsel to President Peres justified her approval of the use of the private plane by saying that "since AIPAC is a known organization, which works in the U.S. for Israel, I thought there was no legal obstacle to having the organizing group pay for the flight…”.

Yet AIPAC has never been required to register as a foreign lobbying agent for Israel due to its clout on Congress.

America, when a soldier dies in Iraq, think AIPAC.   When American Embassies are bombed in Kenya And Tanzania, think AIPAC.    When you remember 9/11, think AIPAC.   When you recall the bombing of the USS Cole, think AIPAC.   When you remember the massive treasonous cover-up of Israel’s deliberate bombing and shelling of the USS Liberty in 1967 killing 34 Americans and wounding 172 that has festered without any Congressional investigation, think AIPAC.   When you think of the murder of the young beautiful idealistic American woman, Rachel Corrie, by an Israeli bulldozer and the silence of our Congress and media toward this tragedy, think AIPAC.   When you learn of trillions of your tax dollars being funneled to Israel free of charge, the sixteenth richest nation on earth, at a time of huge budget deficits, at a time when American families are struggling to find food and shelter, think AIPAC.

Yes, America, whenever you visit Washington D.C. and see the White House and Congress, think AIPAC, for that is the true power, the true government, the true intimidator and terminator of politicians who don’t tow Israel’s line.

The problem America is that we have become unthinking spectators and consumers of lies, myths, and corporate products that dominate our superficial existence as we live our bland lives as worker bees for the small powerful illuminati elite who run our corporations and our government while herding us from one sale to another awaiting the next hallmark moment to give meaning to our empty lives.    How tragic and pitiful that we pay and die for their pockets and causes, not our national interests.    How long must we suffer before we revolt and reclaim our government, for the people, by the people?

Bring up the issues of Jews, Judaism, and Israel in a conversation and you’ll discover the most tense, uncomfortable silence in any conversation.    It’s as if we’ve been vaccinated with the Eleventh Commandment—Thou shall not speak, think, feel, or do anything against the Chosen Few and the Holy Land they stole from the followers of Jesus and Muhammad, peace be upon them both.   

The Judaziation of the world’s intellect, emotions, and policies is almost complete.  

“We are organizing Jewry for its coming destiny. “
–Theodore Herzl (Father of Zionism)

Three brief recent examples will illustrate how the tribal network of committed organized Jews to Israel and to each other manifest in AIPAC’s city, Washington D.C.

1.  AIPAC’s Espionage Case:

In May 2004 the FBI arrested Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran analysts, after he was caught transferring secret documents to two AIPAC employees; Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, along with the Israeli Embassy’s Mossad station chief Naor Gilon.  While Franklin was jailed for 12 years, the two indicted AIPAC employees underwent a lengthy, often postponed, and cumbersome trial due to the Judge’s friendly rulings in favor of AIPAC.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the Department of Justice, apparently with Obama’s approval, dropped the case without any rational explanations.   Bottom line is that our government fears confronting AIPAC, it’s U.S. Congress and the media.   This despite Attorney General Eric Holder’s proclamation that “no one is above the law”.   Obviously, unlike U.S. citizens, AIPAC is above the law.

The influential Jewish paper the Washington Post even carried an editorial supporting AIPAC in this espionage case by urging the Justice Department to drop the case against Rosen and Weissman.    The editorial was titled, “Time to Call It Quits: The Justice Department should drop its misguided prosecution of two former AIPAC officials”. March 11, 2009

2.   The Case Against the Jewish Representative Jane Harman of California.

Shortly after the arrests of the two AIPAC employees on spying for Israel another issue arose that is related to these two employees.   Apparently a “suspected Israeli agent” contacted Rep. Jane Harman who sits on the House Intelligence Committee on a quid pro quo deal.   If she can use her influence to reduce the charges against the two men, the agent would arrange for an AIPAC fundraiser from California, suspected to be Billionaire Haim Saban who’s said his one issue in life is Israel, and a large donor to Representative Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House to be, to place pressure on Ms. Pelosi to appoint Harman as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.    Harman agreed, however, the conversation with the suspected Israeli agent was caught on tape by federal investigators.    Thus a Congressional Jew was selling her country for a powerful position, a position that could allegedly even be more helpful to Israel’s interests.   Pelosi refused to appoint Harman to the position.    The Justice Department lawyers wanted to proceed to investigate this matter which they called a “completed crime”.    But remember, this is AIPAC.   Attorney General Alberto Gonzales killed the investigation in appreciation of Harman’s role in killing a New York Times story on wireless wiretapping of U.S. citizens and for her strong support of the Iraq War.

Tribal support in the mainly Jewish media for Harman was palpable in two ways—in avoiding the story, and two, coming to her defense.   David Frum, former speech writer for George W. Bush and author of “axis of evil” wrote an article defending Harman in “Theweek.com”, April 23, 2009, titled; “The real Jane Harman scandal. Sometimes in Washington, what is most scandalous is the attempt to create a scandal where none exists”.

3.  The AIPAC Smear of Ambassador Chas Freeman, nominated to head the National Intelligence Council.

The highly respected and qualified veteran diplomat, Chas Freeman, was nominated by Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence to head the National Intelligence Council, the same Council that reported in 2007 that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003 that infuriated Israel.   Because of Freeman’s known positions against the Iraq War and Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories a strong smear campaign was launched to derail his appointment, begun by none other than the AIPAC indicted espionage man, Steve Rosen.  

The attacks spread like wildfire through all the right wing Pro Israel media along with enormous pressure on the Congress to deny supporting his appointment although he did not require Senate approval.   In Congress the attacks were led by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Charles Schumer, both Jewish, along with Rep’s Steve Israel, Shelley Berkley, and Eric Cantor, all Jewish.   Representative Frank Wolf, (R-Va) even took to writing an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing Freeman on a whole host of issues that had no basis in fact; what was a fact is the much increased campaign donation Mr. Wolf received from Pro Israel PAC’s.

Ambassador Freeman withdrew his nomination and wrote a scathing letter attacking AIPAC and the Israel Lobby for their power of intimidation and their silencing of any debate on Israel and its impact on U.S. Foreign Policy.

“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. 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”

–Text of Ambassador Chas Freeman’s Withdrawal Letter, March 10, 2009, (Chas Freeman speaks: By vetoing U.S. appointments, the Israel lobby is enforcing adherence to a foreign government (1)

The Washington Post again came to the defense of AIPAC in an editorial entitled “Blame the Lobby. The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory”.  March 12, 2009

One only needs to look at who the columnists and contributors are at the Washington Post to understand the power of the tribe in influencing policy and in defending each other.   

Stephen Stromberg, Richard Cohen, Charles Krauthammer, Anne Applebaum, Michael Kinsley, Michael Gerson, Fred Hiatt, Robert Kagan, Marisa Katz, William Kistol, Haold Meyerson, Steven Stein

AIPAC and the Supreme Court: (2)

In 1989 seven prominent veteran diplomats sued the Federal Election Commission for failing to require AIPAC to publish details of its income and expenditures as required by law.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided against the complainants and ruled for the FEC, i.e. for AIPAC, not to have to disclose its financial activities.   The decision was appealed to the Court of Appeals which reversed the lower court’s ruling and upheld the Complaint against the FEC to require AIPAC to publish the details of its finances.

AIPAC appealed the Court of Appeals decision to the Supreme Court in 1998.   Arguing the case for the FEC and in favor of AIPAC at the Supreme Court was Seth Paul Waxman (Jewish) who was the Solicitor General of the United States  

The case was decided by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer (Jewish).   Justice Breyer’s twisted and illogical decision in favor of the FEC and AIPAC rested on semantic definitions as to what constitutes a “political committee” and a “membership organization”.   He sent the case back to the lower courts for further review.

AIPAC despite boasting of being Israel’s most powerful lobby has still avoided the requirement to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department or to disclose its financial activities to the F.E.C.   It was kismet that both the Solicitor General defending their case and the Supreme Court Justice who was assigned the case just happened to be Jewish.  

Mr. Waxman later received the Anti-Defamation League’s Benjamin N. Cardozo Certificate of Merit.  (Cardozo was a Jewish Supreme Court Justice)

A.I.P.A.C. and the Executive and Legislative Branches:

For decades AIPAC ensured that in the Executive Branch there is a large and disproportionate Jewish representation in the key areas of foreign policy, defense, intelligence, and the treasury—areas that impact Israel’s interests.    It operates closely with the Israeli government, the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., and the Israeli Intelligence Agency, the Mossad, whose motto is “By Way of Deception”.

Barack Obama’s talents were first recognized by Chicago’s Jewish Mafia.   In fact they’ve called him “The First Jewish President”.   They selected him, funded him, put him front and center to give his famous speech at the D.N.C.’s 2004 national convention, and Jewish money started pouring in to allow his campaign to be the most expensive in history.     It’s almost a commandment in the Democratic Party; no one can win without Jewish money and support.

Money, not substance, makes the candidate.    Here’s a brief list of the mainly Jewish banks, financial institutions, and insurers who donated money to Obama’s campaign.   Their investment was well placed for when they crashed they could depend on Obama and their former executives who are the main economic officials in his government to bail them out.  

“Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes its Laws.”
–Anselm Meyer ROTHSCHILD (Powerful British Jewish Banker)

”Can anything be more absurd than that a nation should apply to an individual (Rothschild) to maintain its credit, and with its credit its existence as an empire, and its comfort as a people…”
–Benjamin Disraeli, Jewish Prime Minister, Great Britain

The following recipients of President Obama’s bailout billions rank among his top 20 contributors to his 2008 presidential election campaign, according to Open Secrets.

Goldman Sachs:       $955,473

Citigroup:                  $653,468

JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058

Morgan Stanley:       $485,823

Bank of America:     $274,493

Wachovia:                 $214,151

AIG:                            $112,170

Lehman Brothers:     $276,088.

In an article in Bloomberg.com, April 17: 2009; (”Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue”), Nobel Prize Economist Joseph Stiglitz (Jewish) warned of the corruptive revolving door between Wall Street and the Government.  He stated: “America has had a revolving door.  People go from Wall Street to Treasury and back to Wall Street. ”    He gave the example of the, “Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. that paid National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, a managing director of the firm, more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the 16 months before he joined the administration. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. “   Senator *** Durbin went even further saying that the banks “frankly own the place (Congress)”.

Barack Obama's Economic Team:   All Kosher, No Gentile Economists Available in U.S.A.

Benjamin Bernanke:            Chairman, Federal Reserve System
Timothy Geithner:     Secretary, U.S. Treasury Department
Neal Wolin:                Deputy Secretary, U.S. Treasury Department
Lael Brainard:           Under Secretary, U.S. Treasury Department for International Affairs
Stuart Levey:                         Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
Lawrence Summers: Chairman, National Economic Council
Paul Volcker:            Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Jared Bernstein:       Chief Economist and Economic Adviser, Vice President Joe Biden
Peter Orszag:           Director, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Jason Furman:          Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Jeffrey Zeints:           Chief Performance Officer to streamline government and cut costs as well as
Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Gary Gensler:            Chairman, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
Mary Schapiro:         Chairwoman, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Sheila Bair:               Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Karen Mills:               Administrator, Small Business Administration (SBA)
Jon Leibowitz:           Chairman, Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Steve Rattner:           Car Czar in Treasury Department, Billionaire
Douglas Shulman     Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.)
Neil M. Barofsky:       Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“SIGTARP”)–provide oversight, monitor, and audit to the hundreds of billions of tax money is going

There are other Jewish Economic Advisors not listed here

Obama’s Foreign Policy Team:  

Foreign Policy positions, as they relate to the Middle East, are primarily filled by Jewish Americans, all Pro Israel, with an open revolving door between the Israel Lobby (AIPAC) and so called “think tanks” and top national security positions in government.    This Jewish American cabal had their greatest success in pushing this nation into its illegal murderous invasion of Iraq.    Now their drums are beating for a war with Iran demanding more American treasure and blood in Israel’s cause.  

James B. Steinberg:                       Deputy Secretary of State
Jacob Lew:                            Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources
Jeffrey D. Feltman:               Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (Includes Mideast)
Lee Feinstein:                      Foreign Policy Advisor
Eric Lynn:                              Middle East Policy Advisor
Dennis Ross:                        Special Advisor for the Gulf (Iran) and Southwest Asia to the Secretary of State
Mara Rudman:                      Foreign Policy Advisor
Dan Shapiro:                        Head of Middle East desk at the National Security Council

Three Important Obama Ambassadorial Nominees:

During the Campaign Obama criticized Bush for appointing allies and fundraisers as Ambassadors.  He promised to end the culture of cronyism and appointing Lobbyists in his administration.  But, money makes the world go round.

England:        Louis Susman, Jewish billionaire, Primary fundraiser for Obama, former Citibank Executive
Germany:       Phil Murphy; former Goldman Sachs investment banker, Obama fundraiser
Ireland:           Dan Rooney, football team owner, Obama fundraiser

Other Important Obama Nominees/Appointees who are Jewish:

Julius Genachowski:            Chair, Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Elena Kagan:                         Solicitor General of the U.S., Department of Justice
Dr. Margaret Hamburg:       Commissioner, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein:         Deputy Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden:       Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Alan Bersin:                           Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and “Mexican Border Czar” at the Department of Homeland Security (A Jew rather than a Hispanic American will monitor the U.S.-Mexican border)

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Second Coming as Israel’s Prime Minister: 

"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

– Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s (Bibi) second coming as Prime Minister of Israel follows his first premiership from 1996 to 1999 during Bill Clinton’s administration.    Bibi’s approach to Obama’s peace initiatives for the Middle East is a resurrection of the same intransigence, total rejection of the formula “land for peace”, hard line tough talk, frustrating promises and lies, denial of any Palestinian rights, and dependence on Congress and a compliant media to support him against the President’s policies.

In his first stint as Prime Minister Bibi so angered and frustrated Bill Clinton that Clinton stated, “he thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do whatever he requires."  

Why shouldn’t he?  Bibi and Israel for decades have known that as long as they and their lobby, AIPAC, control the Congress, no President can pressure Israel to make any real effort to ending the sixty one year conflict and forty three years of the most brutal illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and lives in modern history.

Netanyahu’s Position toward President Clinton’s Peace initiative:

No Palestinian State
No Stopping of Settlement Construction
No Dividing/Sharing Jerusalem
No Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees
No Sharing of Water Resources in Occupied Territories
No to the Arab Peace Initiative of 1982 that offers Israel total recognition and diplomatic relations in exchange for total withdrawal from all occupied territories.
All Peace Efforts so far have Failed
Yes for peace for the sake of peace only.
 
At the time the Washington Post, May 7, 1998, carried this headline:

“Netanyahu: U.S. “Cannot Dictate to Us”

[Note:  The late Moshe Dayan spoke of not allowing the U.S. to dictate policy to Israel: “Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”

When Clinton was pushing Bibi to withdraw from a smaller portion of the West Bank that Israel already agreed to, a Congressional and media firestorm erupted in “our” capitol city against Clinton and in salivating support of Israel.   None other than the Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, shockingly encouraged Netanyahu to “defy” Clinton, his own President.  

As reported by the Washington Report on the Middle East (July/August 1998): “On May 19, 1998, the top congressional leaders of both parties-Gingrich, Lott, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO)-fell all over themselves to demonstrate their support for Israel before 2,000 of the faithful at the end of AIPAC's annual policy conference.  However, Gingrich was clearly the star of the show! He brazenly called upon Israel to defy the U.S. government, saying that Israel's "right of self-determination has to be defended at all costs, even against the best intention of some of Israel's friends, including the United States."

When Clinton planned a trip to Israel he was met with this outrageous comment by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra orthodox Shas Party that currently holds 5 Cabinet posts in Netanyahu’s government.  

According to Israelwire.com, December 13, 1998 “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef at his weekly Saturday lecture at Tifferet Yerushalay spoke thus about welcoming President Bill Clinton to Israel; “God plans to return the past glory to the Israel and President Bill Clinton must kiss our feet when visiting”.

Incredulous how a small nation can tell its benefactor and only real ally in the world to basically “shove it”.

AIPAC/Congressional Letter to President Clinton:  Don’t Pressure Israel to Compromise:

AIPAC is known to either write congressional resolutions or author legislation in support of Israel.  On April 6, 1998, 81 Senators signed a letter to President Clinton demanding that he not pressure Israel to compromise.

[Note:  "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".

After much maneuvering, Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from eleven percent of the West Bank (much less than agreed to with the Palestinians) in exchange, as usual, for $1.2 Billion.   However, and as usual again, Israel took the money and ran and within a short time even broke that agreement called the Wye River Agreement.

Prior to his meeting with Netanyahu, Obama, already a committed supporter of Israel, took some good will gestures toward Israel and the American Jewish community in the hope of smoothing his meeting with Israel’s Likud hard liner.

1.      He declared May, “Jewish Heritage Month”
2.      He held the first ever White House Passover Seder dinner, which ironically celebrates Jewish “liberation” from slavery in Egypt.
3.      He cancelled America’s attendance at the U.N. Durbin Conference on Racism to support Israel’s contention that this conference is simply an Anti-Israel bashing meeting.   It was incredulous to see all of Europe prostrate to Israel leave the conference during the Iranian President’s speech.
4.      He decided to rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council which according to Israel is an “Anti-Semitic” body to protect Israel.    The American U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice put this decision bluntly as America’s way to battle “the Anti-Israel Crap”.    This despite that every U.N. organization, every human rights organization, the International Red Cross, and even the U.S. State Department slam Israel as the biggest and most consistent violator of human rights in the world.

In addition to the same rejectionist conditions Bibi held during Clinton’s era, this time he took an even harder line with Obama.   Bibi added the following poisons and non-starters to Obama’s peace initiative.

1.   All previous agreements with the Palestinians are null and void including the 2007 Annapolis Agreement espoused by President Bush.   Thus all the negotiations now are at a “dead end”
{Note:  New York Times, April 1, 2009.  “Israeli Minister Dismisses Peace Effort”]

“In a blunt and belligerent speech on his first day as Israel’s new foreign minister, the hawkish nationalist Avigdor Lieberman declared Wednesday that “those who wish for peace should prepare for war” and that Israel was not obligated by understandings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached at an American-sponsored peace conference in late 2007”.
[Note:  Jerusalem Post, April 7, 2009:  “Lieberman: Peace talks with Palestinians are at a 'dead end']

"What we state unequivocally is that we are completely opposed to what has been and still is the guiding principle of Israel's foreign policy: 'land for peace'  –Avigdor Lieberman Quote
[Note:  Haaretz, May 23, 2009: “Israel won't yield to U.S. demands, won't halt settlement construction”]

Thus with total confidence that Congress, AIPAC’s safety net, will support Israel to again defy an American President who seeks a two state solution, a halt to settlement construction, a negotiated settlement on Jerusalem, and the restarting of peace negotiations based on all previous agreements including U.N. Resolutions, the American Road Map, and the Annapolis Agreement, Avigdor Lieberman issues this confident yet shocking statement reported in Haaretz, April 22, 2009.

“The Obama Administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to, said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in his first comprehensive interview on foreign policy since taking office…..      "Believe me, America accepts all our decisions."

Again such confidence arises from Congress’s total fealty to Israel’s interests above America’s national interest.   Even during huge deficits Congress prefers to send billions to Israel rather than feed one homeless hungry American child.

Gingrich, this time out of office but considered a legitimate GOP candidate for 2012, gave this assessment on Obama’s approach to the Middle East.   In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, May 4, 2009 titled: “Gingrich: 'Obama endangering Israel', and prior to his obligatory candidate slobbering speech at AIPAC’s annual conference, Gingrich blasted Obama by saying: "They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we've ever seen…There's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world."

AIPAC/Congressional/ Letter to President Obama:   Mind “risk” to Israel

In addition and as usual, an AIPAC Congressional Letter was sent to President Obama telling him not to put Israel at “risk” in his Mideast peace initiative.

“A group of 76 US senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to mind the "risks" to Israel in any Middle East peace accord as he presses for a two-state solution to the six-decade conflict.   The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) supported the senators' letter…The four senators who organized the letter are Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Arlen Specter (D-PA) and John Thune (R-SD). The House version was rallied by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA).”

–Ynet (Website for Israel’s largest paper), May 20, 2009, “U.S. Senators to Obama: Consider Risks to Israel”

To further prove that AIPAC is usually the author of Congressional Resolutions against the Muslim state du jour, or letters to the President of the U.S. supporting Israel, or more importantly legislation, a letter sent by Representatives Hoyer and Cantor should’ve elicited a huge scandal and outcry from the American people had the media given the issue its proper attention, but this is Israel, which means our kosher media saw fit to kill the story.

But according to Rawstory.com, May 15, 2009, “Congressional Leaders Inadvertently Expose Israeli Lobbyists Behind Letter”.

“GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process…Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document…. Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”…The email to congress members seeking their support said they hoped they’d sign onto “the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process,” which argued that the US “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel” and added, “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.”   (3)

2.  As a pre-condition to considering peace talks, Bibi insists that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a “Jewish State”; thereby fulfilling the right wing’s long held policy of ethnically cleansing all Israeli Arab Christian and Muslim citizens out of Israel.    This is obviously a deliberate poison pill.

3. Bibi insists that Obama first deal with Israel’s priority, i.e. attack Iran, then discuss the “secondary” issue of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, people, and their future.   Contrary to Obama’s position, Ntanyahu denies that there is any “linkage” between resolving the Palestinian issue and Iran or any other Middle East conflict.

“Israel plans to present U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a series of "red lines" it wants Washington to incorporate into its planned dialogue with Tehran about Iran's nuclear program.”  Chief among them, “A time limit must be set for the talks, to prevent Iran from merely buying time to complete its nuclear development. The talks should also be defined as a "one-time opportunity" for Tehran.”

            –Haaretz March 3, 2009; “Israel to Present Clinton with “RED LINES” on talks with Iran”

 “In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and quickly or an imperiled Israel may be forced to “

            –The Atlantic, March 31, 2009, “Netanyahu to Obama:  Stop Iran—Or I Will”

 Outrageous, shocking, incredulous—yes–but even more outrageous is that Dennis Ross, an observant Jew and strong supporter of Israel allies himself with Netanyahu on the lack of “linkage” between the Palestinian conflict, Iran, or any other Mideast issue, against his own President and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who hired him to deal with Iran

Here’s what Ha’aretz reported on this issue in an article May 27, 2009.  NOTICE the headline.

”Dennis Ross vs. Obama: No link between Iran, Mideast peace”

“Dennis Ross, the U.S. Secretary of State's special adviser on Iran, says in a new book that the United States will not make progress toward peace in the Middle East with the Obama administration's new plan…. The book entitled "Myths, illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East," opposes the Obama administration's concept of linkage… Contrary to the position of the president and other advisers, Ross writes that efforts to advance dialogue with Iran should not be connected to the renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians…. In the second chapter, entitled "Linkage: The Mother of All Myths," Ross writes: "Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of 'linkage.'"

What Chutzpah, what ugly arrogance, that a tiny nation founded and dependent on American largesse   ‘DICTATES' to this alleged superpower “red lines” for its policy toward a third nation, while a mere government civil servant has the audacity to oppose his boss, the President of the United States.   Only in America and only a Jewish Zionist can get away with this just as Israel has gotten away with murder, even of Americans, for decades with total impunity.  

Israelis know they can take advantage of the large presence of Jewish Americans in key positions in the government, of their dual loyalty, and their emotional attachment to a foreign nation that usually supersedes their allegiance to their native country of America that has made them the most powerful, successful, and wealthiest minority in American history.

A brazen example of such opportunistic manipulation to do Israel’s bidding comes from the Chairman of Israel’s National Union, Ya’acov Katz, who upon hearing that the Israeli American former Israeli soldier and now the White House’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel told a Jewish American that Obama plans to pursue a two state solution wrote him a letter reminding him of his Jewish and Israeli origins.

“National Union chairman Ya'acov "Ketzele" Katz sent a letter to White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel last week admonishing him not to forget his Jewish and Israeli origins…. In the letter…Katz wrote: "For many Israelis, this report is a cause for worry because it reveals a condescending attitude toward our prime minister and Israeli public opinion. This is an attitude that Israel does not expect from a real friend such as the US, and all the more so from an Israeli Jew who has succeeded in being appointed White House chief-of-staff."

            –The Jerusalem Post, April 19, 2009, “NU's Katz reminds Emanuel he's Jewish”

In the end Obama surrendered to Netanyahu’s “red lines” and his demand for a deadline on his Iran policy.   After their meeting and during a White House press conference Obama sheepishly caved in to Bibi and gave Iran a seven month deadline, to the end of this year, to respond on its nuclear policy, all Obama could do is beg Netanyahu not to surprise him with a preemptive attack on Iran, but at least have the courtesy to tell him before all hell breaks loose in the Mideast.

Anyone watching the body language of these two men can easily identify who leads America’s foreign policy, and it’s not the man of “hope and change”.    When it comes to Israel, Obama like all his predecessors, clearly proclaims “No We Can’t”.

In the usual pattern of making nice while in Washington D.C. but resorting to insulting and defying the American President and the American people upon their return to Israel, Netanyahu’s senior aides had this to say in response to Obama’s push for a two state solution.

“(Netanyahu’s) aides are already hard at work in bid to discredit US fixation on two-state plan.'Two states for two peoples is a stupid and childish solution to a very complex problem,' they say…. They were further adamant to emphasize that Israel would continue to build in the larger settlement blocs and Jerusalem despite US President Barack Obama's resolute opposition.”

            — AFP, May 20, 2009, “'Fixation on two-state solution is childish”

The President of the United States is offering a “stupid and childish” solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict?  We, Americans, take it on the chin with silence because it’s our specially ally Israel.   One can only imagine the hysterics if Iran’s President said this.

Netanyahu stated that the illegal settlements need to expand due to “natural growth”, the same lie used by every previous Israeli prime minister to continue confiscating Palestinian land.   According to Ha’aretz, May 17, 2009, “New residents account for 33% of West Bank settlement growth”, figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics show that 33% of settlement growth is due to new residents leaving Israel proper” to live in the settlements given the very generous subsidies they receive from the government (in reality from the U.S. taxpayer which violates U.S. law).   Thus Netanyahu’s argument to Obama on settlement expansion is as with all things coming out of Israel—a Lie.

Of course, lest anyone forget, Israel has made it painfully clear that if her existence is ever threatened, it has the nuclear weapons to take the world down with it.   This policy in Israel is known as the “Samson Option” after the biblical figure Samson, history’s first suicide bomber, who killed himself by collapsing the Philistine temple on himself and the Philistines.

“I recall an interview I did for the BBC’s Panorama programme with Mother Israel, Golda Meir. At a point I interrupted her to say: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you’re saying… You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, Golda replied, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Within an hour of that interview being transmitted, the Times of London changed its lead editorial. The new one quoted what Golda had said to me and added its own opinion - “We’d better believe her.”)

            –http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18716.htm

“The Book That Can’t Be Published In America   By Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews”

"We have the (nuclear) capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under." He quoted General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
–Martin van Creveld, Professor of Military History at Israel’s Hebrew University, quoted in David Hirst’s “The Gun and Oliver Branch”, 2003, page 119

“Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years…. What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter.    For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away–unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans–have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?”
–Professor David Perlmutter (Louisiana State University), “Israel: Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation”, Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2002

For the world to stand by paralyzed in its institutions and all its power while Israel continues to brutalize millions of Palestinians, having stolen their land by force and terrorism, having ethnically cleansed them from their homes, farms, and villages, destroying and eliminating close to 500 villages from the annals of geographic history causing the world’s largest and longest refugee problem, continuing an illegal, immoral, and evil occupation that rules the lives of millions at the slightest whim of a politician, general, or soldier, killing and murdering at will, imprisoning and torturing women and children, terrorizing the innocent humanity under their armed boots, is explicable if one accepts these facts.

The power of wealthy Jews embodied in banking, financial, and investment institutions, their control and ownership of the majority of the western world’s media, all of Hollywood, majority of public relations firms, dominance in academia, political “think tanks” that provide the thinking for cowardly politicians, and most of all the most sophisticated, organized, financed, and entrenched lobby ever known in western history.

Deviate from Jewish or Israeli interests and the sledgehammers of ‘Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Denier, Genocidal Liar, Denier of Israel’s right to exist”; all accompanied with the media sobs, cries, and tears of packaged punditry pour into the already guilty conscience of western governments.   

Ironically, while the majority of the Christian and Muslim world are silent in incompetence and complicity, the most active and courageous persons who criticize Zionism and its political and moral destruction of Israel as well as threatening the very future of Jews in this world are Jews themselves, many who support Israel but are ashamed and horrified at Israel’s brutality against another people.

If only Gentiles would join such admirable Jews in their fight for Justice in the Holy Land.

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

                        –Thomas Jefferson

Sources:

1.  http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/freeman-the-powerful-israel-lobby-is-determined-to-prevent-any-view-other-than-its-own-from-being-ai.html

http://thehill.com/letters/rep.-wolfs-assault-on-me-was-shoddy-and-inaccurate-2009-03-23.html
Chas Freeman’s Letter to Rep. Frank Wolf Responding to Wolf’s attacks on him in a Washington Post OpEd where he defends AIPAC/Israel Lobby

http://www.forward.com/articles/103815/
Forward, Jewish Weekly Magazine, Good Summary Article on AIPAC/Lobby Pushing Chas Freeman from Intelligence Position.   Obama, in his silence, supported Freeman’s Withdrawal

2.  http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
(Page 11:  Supreme Court Case by U.S. Diplomats Against AIPAC/FEC)

3.  http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/15/gop-democratic-leader-inadvertently-expose-israeli-lobbyists-behind-their-letter-to-obama/


Additional Important Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k90Jw4AVT-4  
MUST WATCH Video of Israel’s Genocide on Gaza

http://www.freespeech.org/videodb/index.php?action=detail&video_id=11295&browse=0
Video of Jewish American Granddaughter of Holocaust Survivors on the Palestinian Suffering in the Occupied Territories

http://www.freespeech.org/videodb/index.php?action=detail&video_id=11283&browse=0
Professor Illan Pappe on Israel’s Founding and its Catastrophe upon the Palestinians

AIPAC/Congressional Letter to President Bush:

Despite being Israel’s greatest Christian Zionist supporter and genocidal ally in its attacks on Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria; even he didn’t escape the wrath of AIPACongress.

“In a letter to President Bush today, 89 senators urged him not to restrain Israel from retaliating fully against Palestinian violence and to express his solidarity publicly with Israel soon.”

            –New York Times, November 17, 2001, “Senators Urge Bush Not to Hamper Israel”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/81sens.html
Letter content from 81 Senators to President Clinton:  “don’t pressure Israel”.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/uploads/cmimg_12349.pdf
Letter from 76 Senators to President Obama

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/revolving-door-bailout-edition
Revolving Door, Bailout Edition, April 9, 2009:  Documenting the Revolving Door between Congress and Wall Street

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
William Black, the former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist.  Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

http://www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/zionist_plan.html
“The Zionist Plan for the Middle East”, translated by Professor Israel Shahak, (see Greater Israel Map)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Fs73XZqm8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpulsemedia%2Eorg%2F&feature=player_embedded
(AIPAC Annual 2009 Conference.  Watch Our Politicians Prostitute themselves)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbh4_FBImw
(Former GOP Rep. Gilchrest on how Pressure Groups, AIPAC included, prevent debate)

http://www.counterpunch.org/gowani09012008.html
Great Article on the Power of AIPAC and the men and women it smeared and defeated, Great Quotes

 

 BY:  KHALID AMAYREH

There is always fresh evidence justifying the Israeli-Nazi analogy. In recent days and weeks, a number of Israeli officials and lawmakers proposed "draft laws" that would effectively formalize Israel's de facto racism and seriously restrict the human and civil rights of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.  One of the proposals being discussed would criminalize the commemoration of Nakba by Palestinians holding the Israeli citizenship. Predictably, the brazenly racist proposal has infuriated Israel’s 1.5-million-strong Palestinian community.  One Israeli Palestinian parliamentarian compared the proposed law with an imagined promulgation by Germany of a law banning all Jewish activities commemorating the holocaust.

The lawmaker's remarks are not far-fetched.  After all, the Nakba or catastrophe is the Palestinian holocaust, whether we like or not. True, the scope may not be identical in both cases. However, it is also true that Zionists have wrested the Palestinian people historical homeland form its rightful native inhabitants, destroyed their homes and towns, and expelled them to the four corners of the globe.

More to the point, the Palestinians are the longest-suffering people in modern history. They are still being haphazardly killed in the hundreds and thousands by a Gestapo-like army which claims to be the "most moral army in the world." Palestinian homes are still being demolished, Palestinian land is still being stolen on a daily basis, and millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and especially Gaza Strip are still being hounded, starved, tormented, savaged and terrorized by the very country that shamelessly claims to be the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Aryeh Eldad, one of the most thuggish Israeli leaders who has been promoting Israel's manifestly racist discourse against non-Jews in general and Palestinians in particular is Aryeh Eldad of the Nazi-like Ichud Leumi, or National Union.

This party holds more or less the same ideas and perceptions toward the Palestinian people that the German *** held against the Jews and other “Untermenschen.”  It advocates genocide, ethnic cleansing, discriminatory treatment of non-Jews as well as wanton home demolitions and land confiscation of land owned by Palestinians.
Some of the party's associates have called for "wiping off the goyim (non-Jews) from the Land of Israel pursuant Biblical methods."

The term "Biblical methods" refer to the genocidal wars the ancient Israelites waged against the Canaanite tribes in Palestine as recorded in the Bible.
A few days ago, Eldad proposed that Jordan be "transformed" into a Palestinian state and that Palestinians in the West Bank be granted the Jordanian citizenship.
The proposal would impose the Israeli sovereignty on "all mandatory Palestine" from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean and prepare the psychological and legal grounds for the ultimate deportation of the estimated 5.1 million Palestinians from their ancestral homeland.

Interestingly, many Israeli leaders from various political parties have expressed keen interest in the diabolical proposal. Indeed, those who voiced reservations about the proposal did so on the ground that it was "unrealistic” and “impractical” not immoral and criminal.

In fact, even Labor party lawmakers in the Likud-led government voted in favor of referring the proposal to further discussion by the Knesset.

Eldad has a long history of making bluntly fascist and racist provocations against the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line as well as against Islam and Muslims.
Nearly six months ago, he hosted in West Jerusalem a virulently anti-Islam "seminar" in which a number of fascist-minded speakers from Israel and abroad took part.
The one-day seminar was addressed by notorious Islamophobes such as Daniel Pipes, an American-Jewish supremacist, Dutch Legislator Greet Wilders and Eldad himself.

After making characteristically venomous remarks against Islam, the Quran and Muslims, Wilders received a standing ovation.

A few years ago Eldad suggested that non-Jews were not true human beings.  He was quoted as saying during a protest against the eviction by the Israeli army of a small settler outpost in the West Bank that "it was sad that the army was treating real human beings as if they were Arabs."  Eldad has also been a focal advocate of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem where successive Israeli governments have been trying to besiege Arab demographic presence while actively encouraging Jewish settlement activities in and around the occupied Arab city.  Arab Knesset member Ahmed Teibi has described Eldad and like-minded Jewish leaders as "representing and embodying the ugly face of racism and fascism."

"If Eldad and his ilk were living in any European country, they would be thrown behind bars immediately.  The fact that they are thriving in Israel speaks volumes about the poisoned political environment in this country."

Teibi said the roots of Palestinians in occupied Palestine were deeper, much deeper, than the shallow roots of most Israeli Jews.

“Every honest person in this world can attest that every Jewish town or village is built on the ruins of an Arab town and village.”

I believe that honest people around the world are morally obligated to call the spade a spade, irrespective of whose hands the shovel happens to be.  Today, the ugly face of fascism is rising in Israel, and a Jewish Third Reich must never be allowed to evolve and prosper into a full-fledged Hitlerian monster at the hands of the very people who have made the epithet “Nazi” one of the ugliest words in all languages of the world.

Hence, the entire humanity is urged to combat and defeat the new Nazism now thriving in Israel. The fact that this Nazism is having a Jewish garment is totally irrelevant. Evil doesn’t become kosher or innocuous when done by Jews.

 

British author Michael Palin at the Second Annual Palestine Festival of Literature

WRITTEN BY BRENDA HEARD: When Right Succumbs to Might

“The only democracy in the Middle East.”  It has become a cliché amongst supporters of Israel, a phrase as common with parliamentarians as it is with propagandists.  These supporters excuse themselves from turning a blind eye to Israeli violations of international law by claiming that they are not taking sides, but that they are defending the very principles of democracy.  They are ostensibly defending one of the basic tenets of democracy—the freedom of a people to think and speak for themselves.   

It boggles the mind, then, how one can explain away the recent actions of the so-called Israeli democracy.  On 23 May 2009, in a public display of ridicule, a dozen armed Israeli policemen entered the Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem and ordered the closure of the Second Annual Palestine Festival of Literature.
Although a full programme had been publicly announced on 16 April 2009, the Israeli Ministry of Internal Security waited until moments before the Festival opening to dictate that the “event could not be held because it was a political activity connected to the Palestinian Authority.”  Participants were ordered to leave and Israeli police were posted on the street outside.

The Palestine Festival of Literature, or “Palfest,” is an academic, literary event.  It aims to bring writers and artists from around the world to Palestinian audiences.  Part of a UK registered charity, Palfest is supported by UNESCO and the British Council, among others.  Palfest is the essence of transparency: its website offers minute detail of its organisational makeup.  A full list of literary participants can be found here.  A full festival programme can be found here.  Still photos here.  There is nothing devious afoot here, nothing to be construed as a threat to “Israeli internal security.”

Yet Palfest was forcefully and publicly snubbed.  Not to be undone, the Festival was by chance able to re-group at the nearby French Cultural Centre.  But not before the forces of Israeli “democracy” made their point.  As one participant described:

“The sight of the expelled participants and audience as we filed down East Jerusalem's main street, some people carrying dishes of canapes, to the new and hastily organised venue at the French Cultural Institute might have seemed merely odd or amusing. In fact, it was a vivid reminder of Israel's fear of anything which might suggest that Palestinians are as cultured, civilised and deserving of respect as their Israeli neighbours.”

This sort of action mocks the very foundations of democracy.  Yet we encounter such noble statements as the pledge of loyalty given by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 21 July 2008.  He stated that Britain was a true friend to Israel, one “who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice.”  Many British citizens would beg to differ.  Watch the video below and ask yourself if the attitudes expressed are values you would share, values you would condemn the lives and liberties of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples to uphold.  (police enter the festival at approximately two minutes into the video.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJU7-9r-pVA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epalfest%2Eorg%2Fvideo%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

 

Action Alert from Media Lens:
On December 27, 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a massive assault on Gaza. 22 days later, around 1,400 Palestinians, including over 300 children, and 13 Israelis were dead; about 5,000 Palestinians were wounded. Israeli forces bombed and shelled schools, medical centres, hospitals, ambulances, United Nations buildings (including UN schools), power plants, sewage plants, roads, bridges and civilian homes. This was described in much of the press as hitting "Hamas targets" (e.g. David Gardner, 'U.S. accused of white phosphorus against Taliban', Daily Mail, May 11, 2009).

Earlier this month, the UN announced the results of an inquiry into attacks on its buildings and personnel in Gaza. It concluded that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were:

"involved in varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property." (Donald Macintyre, 'UN retreats after Israel hits out at Gaza report', Independent, May 6, 2009)

* The deaths of three young men killed by a single IDF missile strike at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Asma school in Gaza City.

* The firing of heavy mortar rounds into the UNRWA Jabalia school, injuring seven people sheltering in the school, killing up to 40 people in the immediate vicinity and injuring a further 50.

* Aerial bombing of the UNRWA Bureij health centre on the same day, causing the death of a patient, serious injuries to two other patients and injuries to nine of the health centre's employees.

* Artillery firing by the IDF into the UNRWA field office compound in Gaza city, combined with the use of white phosphorus, causing injuries and considerable damage to it and the surrounding buildings, and leading to the disruption of the UN's humanitarian operations in Gaza.

* Artillery firing by the IDF into the UNRWA Beit Lahia school, again with the use of white phosphorus, causing the deaths of two children, aged 5 and 7, and injuries to 13 others.

The inquiry's narrow remit was restricted to UN property and personnel; a key recommendation was that $11m compensation should be sought from Israel for damage to UN property in Gaza. But the final recommendation was that +all+ killings, injuries and damages in Gaza "should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry mandated, and adequately resourced, to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law." (Julian Borger, 'UN chief rejects further inquiry', Guardian, May 6, 2009)

Shamefully, however, when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented the inquiry results, he rejected its authors' call for such an investigation. He even decided not to release the full 184-page report. According to a brief item on the BBC Arabic news website, the BBC was informed by "a diplomatic source" that the United States "informed Ban's office that the report should not be published in full due to the damage that that could cause to the Middle East peace talks." (Cited in Hasan Abu Nimah, 'Ban Ki-moon's moral failure', The Electronic Intifada, May 6, 2009;  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10511.shtml)

The sophistry of these words - "the damage that that could cause to the Middle East peace talks" - is newspeak for "dangerous truths that would further damage the reputations of Israel and the United States."

Ban, no doubt aware of these dangers, conveniently produced his own 27-page summary. Inter Press Service reported that the original report was thus "meticulously stripped down . mostly due to [alleged] political sensitivities and on security grounds." (Thalif Deen, 'UN chief defends "watered down" Gaza report', Inter Press Service, May 5, 2009; http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46733) The report supposedly contained "secret information supplied by Israel" about its attacks on Gaza. (Abu Nimah, 'Ban Ki-moon's moral failure', op. cit.)

Ban then issued this summary together with a covering letter to the UN Security Council. In the letter, Ban said he was "carefully considering" what actions, "if any", to take on the 11 recommendations by his own inquiry team. But he had already appeased both Israel and its powerful backers in the UN Security Council, notably the United States, by stating that he "did not plan any further inquiry."

True to form, the Israelis had called the report "tendentious, patently biased" even before the summary was published. ('UN rejects UN probe under Israeli pressure', Palestine Chronicle, May 6, 2009; http://www.palestinechronicle.com/news .php?id=897c5f65b4ad8fdde3f03 527039af4e0=details) Ban took his cue adroitly. While noting the Israeli government's "significant reservations and objections", he bent over backwards to praise them for their cooperation. He also spoke out, reportedly urged by Israeli ministers and officials, against "continued and indiscriminate" attacks by Hamas.

Of Circus Dogs And Whips

Noam Chomsky commented on the possible role of US-Israeli "diplomacy" in the Secretary-General's decision not to publish the full report or to proceed with a wide-ranging inquiry:

"as far as I know there's no direct evidence about what happened [behind the scenes], though it's not hard to guess. Ban knows as well as any other Sec'y-General that criticism of the US (hence its offshoots [such as Israel]) will undermine what little there is of a UN." (Email to Media Lens, May 13, 2009)

"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip." (Orwell, 'As I Please', Tribune, 1944)

Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan's former UN ambassador, noted astutely that Ban's "courage only went so far":

"[His] flash of anger was limited however only to UN facilities. He spoke as if the rest of Gaza — where more than 7,000 people lay dead or injured, and thousands of homes, schools, mosques, universities, police stations and government buildings were destroyed — did not exist, or were not of UN concern." (Abu Nimah, 'Ban Ki-moon's moral failure', op. cit.)

"Whisked around in his convoy, he did not bother to stop and talk to any of Israel's victims — the families who had just dug the remains of their loved ones from the rubble or those with horrific injuries in Gaza's overstretched hospitals. These are the very people, the Palestinian refugees, that the UN is in Gaza to help, but there was it seems no time for them."

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said Ban's response to the new UN report was "disappointing". He was clear that the inquiry had produced a "very serious and very scrupulously argued report that's based on very careful analysis of the available evidence." (Al Jazeera, May 5, 2009; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oORAuHY1y-Y)

Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International representative at the United Nations, also expressed her concern at Ban Ki-moon's stance. She told Inter Press Service [IPS]: "We are very disappointed with the Secretary-General's reaction to what we have come to know [from the report]."

Terlingen called for a broader inquiry into the Israeli attacks by the 15-member UN Security Council. But one unnamed Arab diplomat told IPS he did not expect any investigation by the Security Council because three of the permanent members, the US, Britain and France, are "far too protective" of Israel. The secretary-general, he said, "will not pursue a broader inquiry because he is under pressure and beholden to the big powers in the Security Council."

Although the UN Secretary General refused to launch a full, wide-ranging investigation under his direct mandate, Israel's leaders have not entirely evaded scrutiny. A four-person team lead by Justice Richard Goldstone has already been appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate alleged breaches of international law, and possible war crimes, in Gaza. But this will not have the same stamp of authority as a full-ranging, impartial investigation carried out by direct authority of the UN Secretary-General himself.

Moreover, the Goldstone investigation is likely to be severely hobbled by Israel's refusal to cooperate and the time that has already elapsed since the assault on Gaza. Falk believes Israel is taking an obstructive stance "because it knows deep down that it made serious human rights violations." He refutes Israel's assertions that efforts to establish the truth are "one-sided attempts to demonize Israel" and "tarnish its reputation":

"The real reason [for Israel's non-cooperation] is that the facts overwhelmingly support allegations that Israel is understandably concerned that any objective inquiry would indeed confirm the allegations and create a situation in which the international community would be obliged to seek some kind of procedure for accountability." (Press TV, 'Falk tells why Israel stonewalls Gaza probe', April 30, 2009; http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx? id=93136&sectionid=351020202)

The Media's Shrug Of Indifference

The most extensive coverage was in the Guardian with two articles totalling under 1200 words. (Rory McCarthy and Ed Pilkington, 'UN report accuses Israel military of negligence and urges reparations for Gaza deaths'; Julian Borger, 'UN chief rejects further inquiry', both on May 6, 2009)

An Independent article devoted just 654 words to the report and Ban Ki-moon's rejection of it. (Donald Macintyre, 'UN retreats after Israel hits out at Gaza report', Independent, May 6, 2009)

Meanwhile, the Times exerted itself by expending all of 99 words on the story. (James Bone, 'UN condemns Israel over phosphorus', Times, May 6, 2009)

And nobody could accuse the Daily Telegraph of avoiding the matter. It granted the story two lines; a total of 47 words. (Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph, 'You must accept the goal of a Palestinian state, Biden tells Israel', May 6, 2009)

In the days since Ban Ki-moon came to the defence of Israel and its powerful backers in the UN Security Council, the British news media has shrugged off any disquiet it might have had.

While there have been UN investigations of war crimes committed in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, somehow war crimes committed in Gaza do not deserve the same scrutiny and accountability. The omission is not unique, of course. There has never been a UN inquiry into war crimes committed by the United States in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The UN would surely be destroyed if such a move were ever seriously contemplated.

For the corporate media, then, there is no need for forensic analysis of this latest cynical sidelining of the UN, a body set up to promote world peace after all. There has been no rottweiler unearthing of this UN capitulation which, once again, effectively covers up major atrocities committed by Israel with heavy backing from its allies in the UN Security Council. But then, they are 'our' allies and, by definition, 'the good guys'. The media instinctively know this is the script they must follow.

SUGGESTED ACTION

Richard Beeston, foreign editor at the Times
Email: richard.beeston@thetimes.co.uk

Ian Black, Middle East editor at the Guardian
Email: ian.black@guardian.co.uk

Katharine Butler, foreign editor at the Independent
Email: k.butler@independent.co.uk

Will Kinnaird, foreign editor at the Daily Telegraph
Email: will.kinnaird@telegraph.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

 

BY:  IQBAL JASSAT

The perception that many American policies are influenced by Israel has been given a further boost with the latest attempt by the US Congress to silence free speech.

The current move to ‘cleanse’ the airwaves involves pro-Israeli members of the congress who are in the process of submitting a bill that seeks to target satellite stations as “terrorist organizations”.

The proposed bill is viewed as Israel’s on-going efforts to stem the tide of widespread support Palestinians have received following the Gaza disaster spawned by the apartheid state’s inhumane war.

Graphic details and gruesome images of victims of Israeli brutality have also resulted in global outrage resulting in condemnation of these war crimes and demands for the prosecution of the perpetrators.

Having failed to eliminate Hamas and the spirit of resistance embodied within all sectors of Occupied Palestinian in spite of the most lethal weapons of mass destruction deployed over three weeks in an intense and highly disproportionate manner, Israel has once again turned to American legislators for help.

In keeping with its need to veil its own hidden agenda, Israeli lobbyists within the US Congress seek to promote the bill as part of US efforts to “stem the demonization of Americans in the Arab media”.

Satellite carriers ArabSat and NileSat that broadcast channels such as al-Manar and Hamas’ al-Aqsa are in the firing line.

Authors of the bill from both the Republican and Democratic parties have explained that these television broadcasters were helping “foreign terrorist organizations in their objectives, including recruiting fighters, collecting funds and disseminating propaganda”.

The language sounds as archaic as the Bush administration’s neocon warmongers. Yet it seems that despite the euphoria of “change” heralded with the election of Barack Obama, no fundamental changes in the American construct of the discredited “war on terror” are discernable.

The phenomena of “terror-related channels” are part of the Israeli political psychology that treats resistance to its illegitimate Occupation of Palestine as “terrorist”. This ploy is designed to demonize media activists, analysts, authors, commentators and broadcasters in one single sweep and thereby discredit their authenticity.

It’s not any different to the propaganda war unleashed against South Africa’s freedom struggle by the now defunct National Party. The essence of this is captured in a critical study by Terry Bell and Dumisa Ntsebeza titled “Unfinished Business: South Africa Apartheid & Truth”:

“The optimism stemming from the effective council of war in Simonstown was bolstered politically by elements within the United States security establishment. They were actively engaged in planning armed resistance to the new, Soviet-leaning governments in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The fact that such governments has come to power in 1979 and that South Africa then faced the prospect of Rhodesia going the way of Angola and Mozambique, fed into the paranoia of the time. South Africa, it seemed, was back in the frontline of the ‘free world’ fight. Here was international communism on the march; the evil empire had gained some advantage, which the CIA and the Pentagon were trying to claw back, having been betrayed by their politicians and congress.

“Botha and his generals saw themselves very much part of this ‘international struggle’. South Africa would play its part in fighting the Red menace and so earn the eventual gratitude of the world at large. The enemy could be resisted and overcome by sponsoring opposition from within the very communities that may initially have supported the new governments. An iron fist could be created and wielded by those whose hearts and minds had been won over. Besides, as Botha was especially pleased to note, in Britain the woman he regarded as a friend, Margaret Thatcher, had swept to power. There was also the prospect of a Republican victory in the US presidential race, which would bring the rightwing Ronald Reagan to power. The CIA and the Pentagon might have less difficulty under such an administration. In Germany too, the conservative Helmut Kohl seemed on the way to eventual victory and Robert Muldoon, regarded as a friend of the apartheid state, was back in charge of New Zealand.”

Though Bell and Ntsebeza describe the rightwing mood prevalent during the eighties which was inclined to be supportive of the apartheid regime’s version of the war on terror, the current ideological battle waged by Israel in cahoots with its Western allies, including unelected Arab states euphemistically referred to as “moderate”, is a continuation of the same propaganda war.

It is a revolting thought that so-called liberal societies who value freedom of expression are being manipulated to implement punitive measures on the back of special legislation designating satellite providers as transmitters of “terror-related channels”.

In addition, the bill urges governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies to oppose transmission of telecasts by al-Aqsa TV, al-Manar TV and other channels designated as “terrorist”.

Since al-Aqsa and al-Manar are transmitting on the satellite providers Nile-Sat, controlled by the Egyptian government, and ArabSat, controlled by the Arab League, it is entirely possible that the timing of this bill was calculated to coincide with Hosni Mubarak’s visit to the US following Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama.

This latest move to reverse Israel’s negative profile in the battle for hearts and minds is the worst form of mind control and should be resisted.

- Iqbal Jassat is chairperson of the Media Review Network (MRN), an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa.

 

 

 

BY:  MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI

I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today's meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee?

I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington -- after eight years of it -- will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state.

It's now or almost certainly never. If Obama lacks the political will to stand up to Netanyahu now, he will lack the capacity later. And by the time Obama leaves office, it will be too late to salvage anything more than an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans. We Palestinians seek freedom, not apartheid, and not the sort of Potemkin villages on the West Bank that Netanyahu is trying to package to the West as visionary economic boomtowns for desperate Palestinians. Yes, we want economic improvement, but the best way to achieve that is through control over our own lives, borders and resources.

Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, claimed in an April interview that "America accepts all our decisions." I was in Washington in February and did not find that to be the case. The Obama administration, I was pleased to hear, planned to be in neither the Israelis' nor the Palestinians' pocket. That is all we Palestinians have ever asked.

Yet, just as in the '90s, Netanyahu believes that he is the world's driving force and that a Democratic president should be following his lead. In his memoir, former lead American negotiator Dennis Ross quoted an exasperated President Clinton as complaining that Netanyahu comported himself as though he thought Israel, and not the United States, was the superpower. That doesn't appear to have changed. How else to explain the recent assertion by Israeli officials that before Israel will address core Palestinian-Israeli negotiating issues, the United States must deal -- apparently to Israel's satisfaction -- with Iran's nuclear program?

The false Iran-Palestine linkage troubles me because its Israeli boosters think that Iran is an immediate concern, and Palestinian freedom can once again be kicked down the road. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister and a representative of Lieberman's extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party, said in April that "the Iranian clock should be measured in months," but the Palestinian timetable "is open-ended."

What Ayalon, Lieberman and Netanyahu fail to grasp is the world's increasing recognition that they are attempting to dictate the timetable for another people's freedom. This is unacceptable in the 21st century.

Yet Netanyahu wants either an impossibly long timetable or no Palestinian state at all. In May 2002, when the central committee of the Likud Party voted on a resolution declaring that "no Palestinian state will be established west of the Jordan River," Netanyahu urged party members to support the resolution. To this day, he has failed to embrace the idea of a Palestinian state, even though the two-state solution has been Israel's avowed policy for years. He hopes to destroy the idea, de facto, through delays that allow time for further settlement activity.

More recently, Netanyahu has added a new demand: that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This is intended only to confuse and delay peace talks. And it's wrong. Palestinians in the occupied territories have no standing to sign away the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to get Israel to the negotiating table. To tell the truth, we don't believe that Israel can be a true democracy and an exclusivist Jewish state at the same time. Yet Israeli leaders seem oblivious -- or pretend to be oblivious -- to why Palestinians would decline to acknowledge Israel's status as a Jewish state.

Increasingly, Israel is out of step with a world hurtling into the 21st century with Obama. This is no longer the segregated world of President Truman and David Ben-Gurion at Israel's founding. Yet Netanyahu's selection of Lieberman, who once stated that "minorities are the biggest problem in the world," exemplifies Israel's tone-deafness in a changed world.

The choice is Israel's: two states, or increasing isolation by a world that will not accept apartheid dressed up as an economic development plan. Tragically, the consequences of further delay and oppression will be endured by Palestinians -- both in the occupied territories and in an increasingly exclusivist Jewish state whose self-definition comes at the expense of Palestinian citizens.

Mustafa Barghouthi, a doctor and a member of the Palestinian parliament, was a candidate for president in 2005. He is secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party. This article was reproduced from the Los Angeles Times.

 

The following international report concluding that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories "has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid" was sent out by journalist Ben White. Another stinging statement from the report: "The Wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent checkpoints suggest a policy permanently to divide the West Bank into racial cantons." (White's book 'Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide', will be published this summer. He can be contacted at ben@benwhite.org.uk)

What follows are some of the highlights of the Executive Summary, but first a few observations. Describing Israel or Israeli policies in terms of apartheid has become more common in recent times, but has also provoked a strong backlash. It is interesting to note, therefore, that this study is a measured assessment written by legal experts on the specific ways in which Israel's policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) can be considered to be 'colonialism' and/or 'apartheid', as defined by international law. It is not, quite clearly and openly, saying Israel=South Africa.

The new report was carried out by the Middle East Project of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. The Middle East Project is:

an independent two year project of the HSRC to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy. Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community.

Background

In January 2007, while addressing the UN Human Rights Council in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, South African law Professor John Dugard asked the following question:

Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT. At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. What are the legal consequences of a regime of prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid for the occupied people, the Occupying Power and third States?

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (and specifically, their Middle East Project) "commissioned this study to test the hypothesis" put forward by Dugard. Beginning in February 2008, fifteen months of workshops, drafting, re-drafting and revision finally produced this report for publication.

Aim and focus

The aim of the project "was to scrutinise the situation from the nonpartisan perspective of international law, rather than engage in political discourse and rhetoric". The conclusion is that "Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid".

The study also focuses on "the responsibility of States as a result of internationally wrongful acts", concluding:

Faced with a violation of the prohibitions of colonialism and apartheid, all States have three duties: to cooperate to end the violation; not to recognise the illegal situation arising from it; and not to render aid or assistance to the State committing it.

On the legal framework in the OPT:

"The occupied status of the West Bank was confirmed by the ICJ in the Wall advisory opinion. Israel's 'disengagement' from the Gaza Strip did not constitute the end of occupation because, despite the redeployment of its military ground forces from Gaza, it retains and exercises effective control over the territory."

"…Israel's administration of the OPT systematically breaches the law of armed conflict, both by disregarding the prohibition imposed on an Occupying Power not to alter the laws in force in occupied territory and by enforcing a dual and discriminatory legal regime on Jewish and Palestinian residents of the OPT. Israel grants to Jewish residents of the settlements in the OPT the protections of Israeli domestic law and subjects them to the jurisdiction of Israeli civil courts, while Palestinians living in the same territory are ruled under military law and subjected to the jurisdiction of military courts whose procedures violate international standards for the prosecution of justice. As a consequence of this bifurcated system, Jewish residents of the OPT enjoy freedom of movement, civil protections, and services denied to Palestinians. Palestinians are simultaneously denied the protections accorded to protected persons by international humanitarian law. This dual system has gained the imprimatur of Israel's High Court and constitutes a policy by the State of Israel to sustain two parallel societies in the OPT, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, and discriminate between these two groups by according very different rights, protections, and life chances in the same territory."

Findings on Colonialism:

"Although international law provides no single decisive definition of colonialism, the terms of the Declaration on Colonialism indicate that a situation may be classified as colonial when the acts of a State have the cumulative outcome that it annexes or otherwise unlawfully retains control over territory and thus aims permanently to deny its indigenous population the exercise of its right to self-determination. Five issues, which are unlawful in themselves, taken together make it evident that Israel's rule in the OPT has assumed such a colonial character: namely, violations of the territorial integrity of occupied territory; depriving the population of occupied territory of the capacity for self-governance; integrating the economy of occupied territory into that of the occupant; breaching the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources in relation to the occupied territory; and denying the population of occupied territory the right freely to express, develop and practice its culture."

"Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem is manifestly an act based on colonial intent. It is unlawful in itself…"

"By thus partitioning contiguous blocs of Palestinian areas into cantons, Israel has violated the territorial integrity of the OPT in violation of the Declaration on Colonialism."

"The economic dimension of self-determination is also expressed in the right of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, which entitles a people to dispose freely of the natural wealth and resources found within the limits of its national jurisdiction. Israel's settlement policy and the construction of the bypass road network and the Wall have deprived the Palestinian population of the control and development of an estimated 38 percent of West Bank land. It has also implemented a water management and allocation system that favours Israel and Jewish settlers in the OPT to the detriment of the Palestinian population…Moreover, it is significant that the route of the Wall is similar to the 'red line' that delineates those areas of the West Bank from which Israel can withdraw without relinquishing its control over key water resources that are used to supply Israel and the settlements."

"This study demonstrates that the implementation of a colonial policy by Israel has not been piecemeal but is systematic and comprehensive, as the exercise of the Palestinian population's right to self-determination has been frustrated in all of its principal modes of expression."

Findings on Apartheid:

"The Apartheid Convention criminalises 'inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them'. The Rome Statute criminalises inhumane acts committed in the context of, and to maintain, 'an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.' Both focus on the systematic, institutionalised, and oppressive character of the discrimination involved and the purpose of domination that is entailed. This distinguishes the practice of apartheid from other forms of prohibited discrimination and from other contexts in which the listed crimes arise."

"It must be clear, however, that practices in South Africa are not the test or benchmark for a finding of apartheid elsewhere, as the principal instrument which provides this test lies in the terms of the Apartheid Convention itself."

"…Palestinians are subject to legal systems and courts which apply standards of evidence and procedure that are different from those applied to Jewish settlers living the OPT and that result in harsher penalties for Palestinians."

"Restrictions on the Palestinian right to freedom of movement are endemic in the West Bank, stemming from Israel's control of the OPT's checkpoints and crossings, impediments created by the Wall and its crossing points, a matrix of separate roads, and obstructive and all encompassing permit and ID systems that apply solely to Palestinians."

"The right of Palestinians to choose their own place of residence within their territory is severely curtailed by systematic administrative restrictions on Palestinian residency and building in East Jerusalem, by discriminatory legislation that operates to prevent Palestinian spouses from living together on the basis of which part of the OPT they originate from, and by the strictures of the permit and ID systems."

"Palestinians are denied their right to leave and return to their country… hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced to surrounding states from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have been prevented from returning to the OPT…Palestinian residents of the OPT must obtain Israeli permission to leave the territory…Political activists and human rights defenders are often subject to arbitrary and undefined 'travel bans', while many Palestinians who travelled and lived abroad for business or personal reasons have had their residence Ids revoked and been prohibited from returning."

"Israel denies Palestinians in the OPT their right to a nationality by denying Palestinian refugees from inside the Green Line their right of return, residence, and citizenship in the State (Israel) governing the land of their birth. Israel's policies in the OPT also effectively deny Palestinians their right to a nationality by obstructing the exercise of the Palestinian right to self determination through the formation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip."

"Israeli military actions have included extensive school closures, direct attacks on schools, severe restrictions on movement, and arrests and detention of teachers and students…A segregated school system operates in the West Bank as Palestinians are not allowed to attend government funded schools in Jewish settlements."

"Israel has divided the West Bank into reserves or cantons in which residence and entry is determined by each individual's group identity. Entry by one group into the zone of the other group is prohibited without a permit. The Wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent checkpoints suggest a policy permanently to divide the West Bank into racial cantons. Israeli government ministries, the World Zionist Organisation and other Jewish-national institutions operating as authorised agencies of the State plan, fund and implement construction of the West Bank settlements and their infrastructure for exclusively Jewish use."

"Israel has extensively appropriated Palestinian land in the OPT for exclusively Jewish use. Private Palestinian land comprises about 30 percent of the land unlawfully appropriated for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Presently, 38 percent of the West Bank is completely closed to Palestinian use, with significant restrictions on access to much of the rest of it."

"In sum, Israel appears clearly to be implementing and sustaining policies intended to maintain its domination over Palestinians in the OPT and to suppress opposition of any form to those policies."

"The comparative analyses of South African apartheid practices…is there to illuminate, rather than define, the meaning of apartheid, and there are certainly differences between apartheid as it was applied in South Africa and Israel's policies and practices in the OPT. Nonetheless, it is significant that the two systems can be defined by similar dominant features."

"A troika of key laws underpinned the South African apartheid regime—the Population Registration Act 1950, the Group Areas Act 1950, and the Pass Laws—and established its three principal features or pillars…Israel's practices in the OPT can be defined by the same three 'pillars' of apartheid."

"The first pillar derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews… At the root of this system are Israel's citizenship laws, whereby group identity is the primary factor in determining questions involving the acquisition of Israeli citizenship…Israeli law conveying special standing to Jewish identity is then applied extra-territorially to extend preferential legal status and material privileges to Jewish settlers in the OPT and thus discriminate against Palestinians.

"The second pillar is reflected in Israel's grand policy to fragment the OPT for the purposes of segregation and domination….That these measures are intended to segregate the population along racial lines in violation of Article 2(d) of the Apartheid Convention is clear from the visible web of walls, separate roads, and checkpoints, and the invisible web of permit and ID systems, that combine to ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory."

"…the policy of geographic fragmentation has the effect of crushing Palestinian socio-economic life, securing Palestinian vulnerability to Israeli economic dominance, and of enforcing a rigid segregation of Palestinian and Jewish populations."

"The third pillar upon which Israel's system of apartheid in the OPT rests is its 'security' laws and policies. The extrajudicial killing, torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians, as described under the rubric of Article 2(a) of the Apartheid Convention, are all justified by Israel on the pretext of security.

"This study does not contend that Israel's claims about security are by definition lacking in merit; however, Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate severe policies and disproportionate practices toward the Palestinians often masks the intent to suppress Palestinian opposition to a system of domination by one racial group over another. Thus, while the individual practices listed in the Apartheid Convention do not in themselves define apartheid, these practices do not occur in the OPT in a vacuum, but are integrated and complementary elements of an institutionalised and oppressive system of Israeli domination and oppression over Palestinians as a group; that is, a system of apartheid."

"This discriminatory treatment cannot be explained or excused on grounds of citizenship, both because it goes beyond what is permitted by ICERD and because certain provisions in Israeli civil and military law provide that Jews present in the OPT who are not citizens of Israel also enjoy privileges conferred on Jewish-Israeli citizens in the OPT by virtue of being Jews. Consequently, this study finds that the State of Israel exercises control in the OPT with the purpose of maintaining a system of domination by Jews over Palestinians and that this system constitutes a breach of the prohibition of apartheid."

Implications and Recommendations:

"The legal consequences of these findings are grave and entail obligations not merely for Israel but also for the international community as a whole."

"Israel bears the primary responsibility for remedying the illegal situation it has created. In the first place, it has the duty to cease its unlawful activity and dismantle the structures and institutions of colonialism and apartheid that it has created. Israel is additionally required by international law to implement duties of reparation, compensation and satisfaction in order to wipe out the consequences of its unlawful acts."

"Breaches of peremptory norms, which involve a gross or systematic failure by the responsible State to fulfil the obligations they impose, generate derivative obligations for States and intergovernmental organisations of cooperation and abstention. States, and intergovernmental organisations, must cooperate to bring to an end any and all serious breaches of peremptory norms."

"States must not recognise as lawful situations created by serious breaches of peremptory norms nor render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. In particular, States must not recognise Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem or its attempt to acquire territory in the West Bank through the consolidation of settlements, nor may they bolster the latter's economic viability. Should any State fail to fulfil its duty of abstention then it risks becoming complicit in Israel's internationally wrongful acts, and thus independently engaging its own responsibility, with all the legal consequences of reparation that this entails…If a State aids or assists another State in maintaining that unlawful situation, knowing it to be unlawful, then it becomes complicit in its commission and itself commits an internationally wrongful act.

"States cannot evade their international obligations by hiding behind the independent personality of an international organisation of which they are members."

"Accordingly we respectfully suggest that, in accordance with Article 96 of the Charter of the United Nations and pursuant to Article 65 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, an advisory opinion be urgently requested on the following question:

Do the policies and practices of Israel within the Occupied Palestinian Territories violate the norms prohibiting apartheid and colonialism; and, if so, what are the legal consequences arising from Israel's policies and practices, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960), the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and other relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?

 

BY: AYMAN QUADER

(In the photo: same story over and over again, in Hebron as in Gaza, IDF soldiers do not respect the homes of Palestinians.)

The old man sat in the light of a kerosene lamp and looked bleakly ahead. His wife sat in the opposite corner, crying loudly "They soiled our sheets, haram, haram, they broke our bed, fired guns in our bed and," the old man said, "they took all our money. The day after we left we found a 100 shekel note in the garden, that's all."

He was talking to a foreign photographer who had come to film the destruction in North of the Gaza Strip about the Israeli occupation of his house. Sa'ad Al Atar lived in a line of houses along a high ridge overlooking Gaza city in Atatra district. It was the part of Gaza nearest the Israeli border, and it also commanded long views of Gaza city, so it was bombed repeatedly in the first few days, and most of the houses were destroyed. Then the Apaches fired rockets at what was left and machine gunned anything that moved. Mr Al Atar stayed home with his family, even when machine gun fire came through the window and sprayed the wall behind them. The foreign Journalist put his fingers in the big holes in the plaster, but to him they were just dents in the wall; to Mr Al Atar they represented fear and salvation at the same time. But there was an even closer miss in the next dark room, where there were no lights. A row of smaller bullet holes at a lower level.

"We were eating our meal on the floor when these came. If we were sitting on a chair they would have gone through our heads. I am lucky that I cannot afford to put chairs in both my rooms," said Mr Al Atar.

What happened next? "The Israelis came and pointed their guns at us. They told us to get into the back room, where the shots had been fired, and to stay there, and they went on to the roof. They told us that if we moved, they would shoot us. They went upstairs, they stole my money, soiled the beds, left condoms everywhere. They fired holes in the bed - for what? While people were dying they were making love with each other in our bed, and then they destroyed it. All our money was in the mattress, everything for the whole family, and they took it all. Then after 3 days, they left. Just left."

His family of seven children and his wife listened in the gloomy light. "There is no glass in the windows, and we cannot afford even to buy plastic sheets," said Mrs Al Atar. "The UN gave us some blankets, but we have no money to repair anything and no one helps us. No one. And it is cold, even our clothes they cut up and soiled - look, look at these cuts, why, why they do this, why?"

They drank their tea in silence, the foreign photographer left, and the light went out.

BY:  SAMAH SABAWI

What is life worth?

A grain of earth

A drop of oil

A flag on a hill of holy soil

A cross...a star...a crescent moon...

Is it worth ending a life too soon?

What sacred verses can explain

Sniper fire...

And white phosphorous rain?

What Holy Scripture gave the command

"Thou shall wipe out their villages

And scorch their land"

And after the massacre

Did they lament?

Did they seek forgiveness?

Did they repent?

Did they try to sanctify their burdened souls

While besieging a people behind their walls

Or did they wear with pride their murderous skills:

A pregnant woman with a caption "1 SHOT 2 KILLS"

No rest for the less sacred, no safety, no light

No benediction, no prayer, no end in sight

No bread, no medicine, no shelter, no salvation

No angels can survive this holy Occupation

TELL ME THIS:

What is the life of a Palestinian worth,

In this God forsaken earth?

 

         

 

BY:  UM MAZEN OF KABOBFEST

As Easter is soon upon us and with the Pope due to arrive in Palestine in the coming month, it is befitting that we begin the canonization process to declare Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian “Prime Minister” a saint. Fayyad has long been revered as a saint to most in the West. After he was (illegally) appointed Prime Minister, foreign ministers around the world clamored to declare that he was the sole reason that Palestinians were receiving the guilt money provided by the Europeans. Tony Blair – a failure as Prime Minister and now a failure as Quartet envoy – joined the chorus. Even the Israelis – never known for being kind to the Palestinians have declared Fayyad as close to G-d as a human being can be.

Always sacrificing himself for the Palestinian cause, Fayyad, reluctantly took the job as Prime Minister and when his government failed to get confirmed by the Palestinian Legislative Council he reluctantly agreed to stay on as the (illegal) Prime Minister for more than a year and a half! During his tenure, Saint Salam could be seen attending meetings with Israelis in order to ensure that no food or fuel supplies make it into Gaza; trying to disband labor unions, threatening to cut off the electricity supply of refugees in the West Bank and banning demonstrations during Israel’s 23-day holocaust on the Gaza Strip. Of course, many have recognized his sacrificial ways: in February, Hillary Clinton, after seeing the Saint himself at another guilt money conference held to mask Israel’s Gaza holocaust, Clinton boasted about Saint Salam’s presentation skills to a group of Ramallah students: “It was one of the best I’ve ever seen!” Off-camera she said, “Some of my best friends are Palestinian!”

This self-sacrificing neo-Saint even resigned last month just to further the Fatah-Hamas dialogue (largely stalled because of him – but who’s pointing fingers). Saint Salam vowed that by March 31st, he would be out of a job – whether or not a new national unity government was formed. The Saint called in a group of Palestinian journalists – all on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority – to explain his self-sacrifice. “Horror” the headlines proclaimed. What would the Palestinians do without the Saint?! Who could ever replace him? Who would continue to pay out the guilt money? But ever the Saint he is, and after reading the ‘analysis’ in Palestinian newspapers, Saint Salam declared a couple of days ago that he would remain in office in a “caretaker” position until a new government is formed. Phew! What would we Palestinians have done without him? At least we can rest now knowing that Saint Salam and his American backers are taking care of us. Hallelujah!

BY:   HANITIZER OF KABOBFEST

The Huffington Post recently ran a story about an Israeli scandal of a different size. Apparently the oasis of democracy and the guardian of freedom in the Middle East has a problem with women in power.

Reports revealed the disappearing of two female ministers serving in the new Israeli Cabinet led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Members of the new "Screw the Palestinians" Cabinet were taking a portrait picture to celebrate the formation of a new government as well as the death of the peace process.

Apparently, the newspapers geared toward ultra-Orthodox Jewish folks photoshopped the cabinet photo in order to take the two women out of the picture. The two ministers who have mysteriously disappeared from the photo are Limor Livnat, the Minister of Culture and Sports and Sofa Landver, the Minister of Absorbtion, proving yet again that the State of Israel fails in its attempts to reflect any culture other than one dominated by the rule of the "good ol' boys." To their edited Ministers' credit, Ms. Livnat was a good sport about the whole ordeal and Ms. Landver didn't have a problem with not being absorbed.

According to the editors at those Ultra-Orthodox newspapers, it's immodest to print pictures of women. Radical Muslims now feel vindicated at last, by none other than Ultra-Orthodox Jews.

    The daily Yated Neeman digitally changed the photo, moving two male ministers into the places formerly occupied by the women.
    The weekly Shaa Tova simply blacked the women out, in a photo reprinted Friday by the mainstream daily Maariv.

BY:  KHALID AMAYREH

Zionist massacres then and now. I have been under fire of late from two diametrically opposite quarters. First, the fanatical, self-worshipping Zionists who think that non-Jewish suffering should never ever be compared with Jewish suffering.

Needless to say, this psychotic attitude stems from deep-seated convictions that a Jew is a special creature whose life is worth more than the rest of humanity. Haven’t we noticed, for example, how Israel has made “Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier imprisoned by Hamas, a household name all over the world, while next to nothing is mentioned about the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps?

And, second, some pro-Palestinian activists who believe that I should avoid invoking the holocaust in my writings lest this help legitimize the Zionist narrative and inadvertently justify Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

To our pro-Palestinian activists, I, with all due respect, would like to say the following. I sincerely believe that we would be walking in the path of immorality if we denied or belittled other people’s suffering.  Indeed, it is imperative that we retain our humanity and moral fabric in the course of this legitimate struggle against the evil state. We must never imitate or emulate their ways and tactics. This would be self-defeating, self-destructive and immensely demoralizing.

Moreover, we must refrain from saying or doing things that would make others portray us as inherent enemies of Jews, because we are not.

We also need to be constantly vigilant and cautious about what we say and how we say it, lest we inadvertently besmirch the legitimacy of our just cause.

Israel is so manifestly criminal and ugly that we don’t need to deny anyone’s suffering to prove this plain fact.

In short, we don’t have to shoot ourselves in the foot. It is wrong and it hurts us a lot.

Obviously, the Zionists’ “arguments” are motivated, as always, by ill-will and a malicious desire to silence critics of Israeli criminality whose phantasmagoric expressions we all witnessed recently in the Gaza Strip.

The subject of contention this time has been an article I published a few days ago, entitled “Shame on us,” in which I strongly criticized efforts by some dubious “peace activists” to bamboozle some innocent Palestinian children from some impoverished localities into playing music before “holocaust survivors.”

This is what happened last week when a dozen young musicians from the Jenin Refugee Camp, in the northern West Bank,  were taken surreptitiously to Tel Aviv where they were made to play a serenade before some elderly Zionists, some of whom veterans from the many criminal wars Israel had waged on our people. And as I said in the article, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was not carried out by UFOs but by the very people our children are now being asked to cheer up.

Understandably, the not-so-innocent event left many Palestinians infuriated by the cheap exploitation of these kids for Israeli hasbara purposes. As one who lost three uncles in one day to Zionist murderers in 1954, I felt deeply wounded and humiliated by that event.

I am actually not against reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews. I don’t and never will view Jews as our inherent enemies. Some Jews are actually among the most effective supporters of our national cause. Those we salute for their honesty and morality.

However, it is obvious that true reconciliation in this part of the world requires that the slate be made thoroughly clean. Usurped rights must be returned to rightful owners, and wrongs must be rectified. This I say to honest and conscientious Jews who are genuinely interested in justice and peace.

But to the Zionists I would like to say that the following: the latest point of contention is not about music or even peace. This is first and foremost about human dignity of which the children of the holocaust and their children and grand children and great grandchildren have been trying to rob us.

And whether you like it or not, for us, at least, you represent the real Wehrmacht, the real SS and real Gestapo. You are the *** of our time. This is what we see from our vantage point. This is what much of the world sees. This is what many honest and conscientious Jews see.

You stole our country, you murdered our people, you destroyed our homes, and you expelled and dispersed the bulk of our people to the four corners of the world. And after all of this, you have audacity to dupe our children to sing and play music to you? This is simply beyond, far beyond, Chutzpah.

Some of you habitually babble the word “hatred” whenever a Palestinian asserts his people’s humanity and dignity.

Well, you are really sick to the bone if you think Palestinians must sacrifice their dignity in order to become a hate-free people according to the Zionist lexicon. We will not pay tribute to the killers of our children, we will not show respect to those who murder us.

Besides, who do you think you are anyway to lecture us on hatred? After all, you represent and embody hatred in its ugliest form. The extirpation of a people from its ancestral homeland from time immemorial is a satanic act par excellence. The destruction and obliteration of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages to fulfill Jewish nationalism is diabolical act of the highest order.

Your recent blitzkrieg in Gaza during which your Nazi-like army ganged up on a helpless, unprotected civilian population, exterminating them with bombs and missiles and incinerating their children with White Phosphorus proved once again that you are no better than the hateful *** you curse day and night for what they did to you sixty years ago.

Well, try to get yourselves out of this cocoon of self-denial. The Palestinian people don’t hate music nor do they teach their kids to hate Jews or non-Jews, it is your evil and murderous actions that generate hatred against you not only among Palestinians and Muslims but among many other people around the world.

Just look at your ugly faces in the mirror.

 

 

BY:   KHALID AMAYREH

There is no doubt that the new Israeli government, led by Benyamin Netanyahu, honestly reflects the collective mindset of the Israeli Jewish Zionist society.  True, there are Israelis who are averse to racism and fascism, but these are unfortunately very few in numbers and their influence is almost negligible.

Indeed, a fleeting glance at the composition of the new Israeli cabinet reveals an extremist coalition of war criminals, pathological liars, racist thugs (both of the Hitlerian and Stalinist styles), and hateful religious maniacs who inhale and exhale hatred 24 hours per day.

For those who don’t know him, Benyamin Netanyahu is a pathological liar par excellence.  His modus operandi is based on dishonesty, mendacity, prevarication, and deception.

Despite his public relations babbling about “peace with our neighbors,” the man is firmly anti-peace, against the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and against equal rights for Jews and non-Jews.

He is actually an enthusiastic advocate for Judaizing East Jerusalem by checking Arab demographic growth, demolishing Arab homes and denying Jerusalemites their natural rights to build homes to meet natural growth.

This brazenly racist policy is known as “narrowing Arab horizons” and its ultimate goal is to force the Arab inhabitants of Al-Qods, or as many of them as possible, to leave the city and emigrate for good.

Netanyahu’s venomous racism is not confined to the Palestinians of the “occupied territories” or the “Shtachem” as the West Bank and Gaza Strip are often referred to in Hebrew.

He was quoted on several occasions as demanding that “measures” be taken to prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from reaching the 30% threshold.

Furthermore, Netanyahu who often invokes the concepts of civility, democracy and western culture, especially when addressing naïve western audiences, actually believes that Israel should embark on a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians if and when the international community, particularly the US, would tolerate such a scenario.

In 1989 Netanyahu told students at Bar-Ilan University that "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Well, for those who take the word “transfer” lightly, they should know that “transfer” is only a euphemism for genocide.

If such is the character of the premier, one can have a clear idea about his lieutenants and ministers from Avigdor Lieberman, to the gurus of Gush Emunim (the settler movement), who are shamelessly demanding that non-Jews in Israel-Palestine be either exterminated, deported or enslaved as water carriers and wood hewers in the service of the master race!

And then there is the irredeemably opportunistic war criminal Ehud Barak who insists rather arrogantly that the army that exterminated hundreds of Gaza children with White Phosphorus just two months ago is the most moral army in the world.

Netanyahu is not stupid. He realizes that his ideological convictions are too ugly and too fascist to be accepted by the international community, including the US, Israel’s guardian-ally.

This is why he is going to mislead the world by blurring and hiding, as much as possible, his government’s fascist nature.

He will heavily resort to employing “diversionary tactics” such as “terror,” “Iran,” “anti-Semitism,” and “Hamas” to distract attention away from the fascist and criminal platform of his government.

He will shout “Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthauzen, Bergen Belsen” whenever Israeli crimes are exposed and criticized.

He will claim that Israel will not allow itself to be pushed to the brink Auschwitz whenever Israel is demanded to end its Nazi-like occupation of the Palestinian homeland and allow the Palestinian people the right to independence and self determination.

In short, we are talking about a man who lies as often as he breathes a dishonest politician who thinks  and smart public relations can be a more effective substitution for an honest peace process based on human rights and international law.

This is why, the capitals of the world must not allow themselves to be duped, deceived and cheated by this notorious, cardinal liar.

I am, of course, in no way suggesting that the previous Israeli government was less nefarious than the new one.  The previous government of the evil trio Olmert, Livni and Barak had all the hallmarks of a Zionist Third Reich.

What else can be said of a government that ordered its army to exterminate and incinerate thousands of civilians with White Phosphorus, and then shamelessly claimed that it didn’t really mean to do it?

However, that government was considered by many states around the world, such as the gullible Europeans, a “government of peace,” a “liberal,” even “leftist government,” which really gave a new meaning to the term “verbal fornication.”

For us Palestinians, and despite the legitimate and understandable anxiety stemming from the rise of fascism in Israel, it is still better to have in Israel a manifestly fascist government pursuing fascist policies than a deceptively “liberal” or  “leftist” government pursuing the same criminal policies.

Let the world see Israel as it really is.  

In the final analysis, an honest criminal is better than a lying saint. At least the former is predictable and consistent.