Monday, March 30, 2009

Spanish human rights attorney: ‘I would recommend that Mr. Feith… get a very good lawyer.’

Last week, a Spanish court agreed to consider “opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials…over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay.” Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith said the charges “make no sense,” adding, “they criticize me for promoting a controversial position that I never advocated.” Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers filing the complaint, responded to Feith, saying, “If they [Bush officials] are innocent, they shouldn’t be afraid” to come to court:

“I would recommend that Mr. Feith first of all read the complaint, and secondly that he get a very good lawyer,” Boye said. “If he is so sure of what he is saying — then the address of the national court is #22 Genova Street, second floor.”

Feith often expresses amnesia about his central role in approving torture. “I strongly championed a policy of respect” for the Geneva Conventions, he told Congress last year. In reality, British international lawyer Philippe Sands reported that Feith “took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva.”

Source with links is here.

P.S. I guess Mr. Feith will have to cancel any European vacation plans, unless he limits them to European themed malls... in Israel or the United States.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Absurdity of Spending US Tax Dollars on Israel While Americans Struggle

Paul J. Balles argues that if enough ordinary Americans “feel the pinch and connect the dots between their own financial losses and America’s continued unbridled support of Israel’s devastating war machine, Israel could be forced to make peace with the Palestinians”.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once quipped that a person is not conscious of his or her little toe until the shoe pinches. Likewise, one typically is not conscious of an event or situation that can have great impact on one's life until it has a direct affect.

In an article I wrote in September 2007 on "Overcoming the apathy, fear and listlessness of Americans", I pointed out that, “liberties and freedoms may be squeezed ... but until 'the shoe pinches', the squeezing won't hurt most people enough to get them to act". In short, most people pay little, if any, attention to politics, social issues, environmental problems, economic concerns or military events until they hurt directly.

The things that are now painfully connected to the recent financial crisis in America include health care costs that people are unable to meet, home foreclosures, job losses, excessive credit debt and loss of pay.

Is it possible that an economic catastrophe in America might have a surprisingly positive effect? An article by Jane Stillwater entitled "Our dual-citizenship Congress” suggested an unforeseen result that could be very good for the whole world.

First, Jane’s article reveals that the shoe is pinching ordinary Americans. She writes:

I turned on the television last night and listened to the local news anchor tell me, "The State of California is currently facing bankruptcy." I live in California.

This is not good news. Plus California's jobs are drying up, homes are being foreclosed on, stores are going out of business, schools are laying off teachers, banks are eliminating branches. The eighth-largest economy in the world is about to tank. Boy could we use some financial help from the feds.

Then, after asking, “But will we get it?” she concludes, “Probably not.” While California and other states are not receiving bailouts like the banks that will help ordinary people, Jane concludes:

But Congress still continues to enthusiastically pour billions of our taxpayers' dollars into the Israeli economy each year. What's with that? Do our Congressional representatives hold dual citizenship with the United States and Israel or what? When are they going to stop voting pork for Israel and start voting bailout money for CA?

Are we Californians going to have to start firing Qassam rockets at Washington to get their attention or what?

After getting Jane's permission, I sent her article to my Congressman and cc'd it to everyone I know in California. The next day, I received several comments that echoed Jane’s complaint. Why are we continuing to send US taxpayer money to support Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza while we don’t have enough money to support our own economy?

My daughter wrote, "It infuriates me to think that they are spending our tax $$$ for Israel instead of our own country and state. Yes, we are feeling the pain of it too!"

Her husband, a fire captain in Southern California, has just lost 10 per cent of his pay due to the governor's budget cuts.

How can this possibly have a positive outcome? The economic crisis in both state and federal budgets has already pinched many shoes. Americans are very upset at the damage done to their financial conditions.

If enough people feel the pinch and connect the dots between their own financial losses and America’s continued unbridled support of Israel’s devastating war machine, Israel could be forced to make peace with the Palestinians.

Source article is here.

P.S. Americans can't afford health insurance until Isreal is secure. And Israel will never be secure because the concept of Jewish apartheid [Israel] is indefensible. It is an illogical, unjust concept that will always, and justifiably engender resistance, as long as there is any humanness or decency in humanity.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo: kosher tequila

NEW YORK - A New York businessman is launching a new kosher tequila in time for Cinco de Mayo.

Martin Silver says Agave 99 will be on the market in time for the holiday that celebrates Mexico's defeat of French forces on May 5, 1862.

Silver, president of Long Island-based Star Industries, says he wants to satisfy the craze for high-end tequila with one that observant Jews can drink — "to help the Mexican economy and the Jews."

Silver says a half million cases of the 99-proof kosher tequila are being produced at a Mexican plant using methods certified by a rabbi. It will retail for $41.95 a bottle.

The product launch — with Mexican songs sung in Yiddish and Spanish — is set for May 5, but it will also be sold earlier, for Passover.

Source article is here. And a video report about the kosher tax that Americans pay for virtually every food item they buy is here and here.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Behold, Zionist Soldiers Come Bearing Tidbits of Truth!

Almost immediately after the day Christians and Muslims celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, Israel made good on threats issued the previous year by then-Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai when he warned that a “shoah“–the Hebrew word for holocaust–was about to befall the beleaguered people of Gaza. Termed “Operation Cast Lead” (in reference to the process of pouring molten lead into a small, confined space in achieving a desired shape) the Jewish state did indeed wage a 3 week mini-holocaust of sorts upon the Gentiles living in Gaza, the same area considered to be the most densely-populated piece of real estate on earth.

Following her humiliating defeat in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and knowing a full year ahead of time what she was about to do in Gaza, Israel decided that priority #1 was to make sure the upcoming fight was an easy one. Seeing all persons in Gaza as enemy combatants (by virtue of the fact they were gentiles “polluting” the land given expressly to the Jews by their god Yahweh) she began by starving the Palestinian population of even the most basic necessities of life–including food, fuel, writing paper and even children’s clothes (which Israel said could be made into military uniforms) for over a year.

Having then determined that through this process of deliberate starvation Gaza’s immune system had been weakened to the point it posed no substantial threat to the virus-in-waiting, Israel then made sure there would be no media coverage of the upcoming massacre by driving out reporters and international human rights monitors and refusing them re-entry. In the words of one Rabbi Pruzansky–

“Israel was most clever in keeping Western media out of the conflict zone. No pictures means no lasting story, and no lasting story means no consequences…”

…or so the Jewish state had hoped…

When all was finished, close to 7,000 civilians had been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. 100,000 + had been made homeless, thousands of structures–including homes, hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, food storage facilities, water treatment plants, etc–were demolished. Livestock and farms (the only sustenance for a population of people being deliberately starved as a result of Israel’s blockade) had been destroyed. Otherwise fertile soil was permanently poisoned with phosphorus, making any future cultivation of food impossible. In sum, what was an already barely-functioning infrastructure for close to 1.5 million people–over half of them children–received a bullet to the back of the head, execution style by La Kosher Nostra, the gangster syndicate known as the Jewish state.

Apart from the new types of high-tech weapons used on the hapless victims however there were few substantive differences between this massacre and the hundreds of others taking place the previous 60 years. Just as in places such as Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatilla (as well as the 400 Palestinian villages and towns systematically wiped off the map over the last half century) Gentiles were killed en mass. Bodies were piled up like cordwood, most of them women and children. The only thing not taking place this time was the bellies of pregnant women being slashed open and the children ripped out as had happened in previous massacres.

Otherwise, as far as Israel’s history goes, it was a case of “SSDD”, meaning “Same slaughter, different day”.

The one difference however between this most recent slaughter and its predecessors was this miracle of sorts known as the internet that–as in the case of Lebanon in 2006–caused serious problems for Israel and her ability to control the flow of information to the outside world. This being the case, what had previously been the simple task of neutralizing negative world opinion concerning her actions had now been made much more difficult.

Now however, in an admission suspiciously stunning for its frankness and seemingly out of the clear blue members of Israel’s military are coming forward and admitting what the rest of the sane world already knew to be the case–that the war waged against the civilians of Gaza was deliberate and that all persons–women and children included–were considered enemy combatants from the get-go.

Appearing first in Israeli’s Haaretz news service and then picked up by virtually ever mainstream news source in the US and throughout the West, the statements from IDF who were there on the ground in Gaza are an almost-mirrored reflection of the charges made months ago by those in the alternative media. Stories of women and children being deliberately targeted by machine gun fire, missiles, bombs, mortars, every instrument of death unleashed upon a civilian population that the angel of death known as the Jewish state had in her arsenal, and now rather than it being limited to the testimony of only “anti-Semites” “conspiracy theorists” and “Jew haters” (meaning the victims themselves) now “wise guys” from within “La Famiglia” are singing too.

Besides the inordinate (dare we say unprecedented) sense of honesty surrounding the press stories, the other thing sticking out like a sore thumb is the quite-noticeable absence of the all-too-typical censorship on the part of a western media held almost entirely by Jewish interests. Things that would never be discussed openly (much less even mentioned) in the last week are now found emblazoned across pages in some of the biggest media outlets in the US with the same kind of enthusiasm as the Bernie Madoff scandal or the coverage of Elliot Spitzer’s troubles a year ago, and not just newspapers, but TV and radio as well.

In the meantime, the world–Jew and Gentile alike–are now reacting with shock over this latest admission that Israel indeed engaged in targeting civilians in Gaza as if it were the last thing any sane person should have expected. Those who scoffed and scowled at the alternative media in its coverage months ago and reacted with hostility to the assertion that ‘the most moral army in the world’ deliberately targeted civilians now find themselves eating some bitter crow.

The truth however is that this latest disclosure should have been as much a shock to the ‘enlightened’ west as a farmer coming out to find his chickens ripped to pieces after leaving the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse.

The truth is, as indicated earlier the only difference between the latest carnage taking place in Gaza and what has taken place over the course of the last 60 years is that in this case Israel and her paid liars were not as successful this time around in painting the kind of deceptive picture needed to neutralize bad press and manipulate public opinion in her favor.

Due to the internet and the availability of raw information, analysis and commentary that has not passed through the kosher filter, Merlin is not able to cast the kind of magic spell he did in years past. Every mother cut to pieces or incinerated by Israeli bombs, every child shot in the head by one of God’s chosen snipers accompanied by denials on the part of the Jewish state underscores who the real liars and terrorists are, and Jewish interests, who have made the business of controlling entire societies by controlling what they see, hear and read, are losing control over this sector and they know it.

Long before articles dealing with IDF forces “coming clean” and admitting they witnessed deliberate targeting of civilians were articles quoting Israeli officials and their worry over the fact Israel’s image had suffered as a result of the war. They are quoted saying that a “re-branding” of the Jewish state’s image was necessary, one Israeli foreign ministry official saying after Gaza that “The country needs to position itself as an attractive personality“ if they are to “get where we need to go over the long term.” As a result, Israel’s Foreign Ministry was granted an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through “cultural and information diplomacy”. Arye Mekel, the ministry’s deputy director general for cultural affairs was quoted saying “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits…This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

In other words, it is all a matter of marketing, of slapping a new coat of paint on an old, dilapidated house and calling it a mansion. It is a facelift of sorts for a woman whose loose morals and fast living are beginning to betray the fact she has a lot of miles under the hood. It is no different than a convicted murderer appearing before the court on sentencing day with a fresh shave, combed hair, clean hands, new suit and begging the court for mercy, saying he has “found Jesus” and resolved to confess his sins, do his penance and amend his life, amen, and all in the interest of avoiding the death penalty.

Read the entirety of this must read article here.

Let the Numbers Speak, Six Years into the Occupation

A letter from an Iraqi scientist:

Dear Friends,

I pride myself in being a scientist and a researcher. I built my academic career on theories and numbers. As a teacher, I teach my students that everything is based in science - everything has reason. For this reason, I am always frustrated with myself when I find I am overwhelmed with feelings on specific topics.

One such topic is the occupation of my country, Iraq. On this subject I find that I cannot always be dispassionate. I cannot be the researcher and observer and discuss it without feeling or emotion as I am sometimes expected to do. I find myself doing research on the damages caused by the war and occupation, and my head buzzes with anger, my eyes burn with tears of desperation at the state of my country.

Six years after the attack and the pain is as fresh and cutting as it was in March 2003. This year, I decided, I would view it as a scientist. I would not attack the subject with emotion. I would let the numbers speak for themselves. This year I will sit back and play the part of the analyst- the researcher- on this topic that is closest to my heart.

Six years into the occupation…

- 72 months of destruction
- $607 Billions spent on the war
- 2 Million Barrels of oil being sold per day
- 2 Million Displaced Iraqis inside of Iraq
- 3 Million Iraqis forced to leave the country
- 2615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood
- 338 dead journalists
- $13 Billion misplaced by the current Iraqi government
- $400 Billion required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure
- 3 hours average of electricity daily
- 24 car bombs per month
- 7 major mafias running the country
- 4260 Americans dead
- 10,000 cases of cholera per year
- 50 of my friends dead
- 22 of my relatives dead
- 15 abductions of close relatives and people I know and love
- At least 1.3 million Iraqis dead since 2003.

Six years into the occupation and somehow, the numbers are not looking better. Year after dismal year, the numbers of dead and displaced grow as we continue to reap the rewards of an American occupation on our country.

So the numbers speak for themselves. Six. Six months is what it took for most Iraqis to realize no good could come of this war and occupation. Six years is what it has taken the rest of the world. Six years, six million Iraqis displaced inside and outside of Iraq- well over a million Iraqis dead or dying inside of the country.

As a scientist, as a researcher- it is a disaster that will never be sufficiently documented with numbers or words. As a researcher, the numbers are so astounding that we go back and recalculate to make sure they are real. As an Iraqi, it is enraging. The numbers and statistics fill me with a rage and shame that make my heart throb and my blood boil. It’s a rage towards all who are silent and uncaring, and a shame at the little we all are doing.

Source article is here.

P.S. My fellow Americans, what are we so proud about?

"Nadya's Story" or "How to Create a Suicide Bomber" by the American Occupation

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Federal Reserve: Jewish Private Bankers

JEWS CONTROL THE MONEY in America. Jews own and run the Federal Reserve Bank that the US government continually borrows from and is in debt to.

Napoleon said: When a government is dependent for money upon the bankers, they and not the government leaders control the nation. This is because the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. 

The Federal Reserve Bank is a consortium of 9 Jew-owned & associated banks with the Rothschilds at the head:

$1. Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin.

$2. Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris.

$3. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy.

$4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam.

$5. Lehman Brothers of NY.

$6. Kuhn, Loeb Bank of NY (Now Shearson American Express).

$7. Goldman, Sachs of NY.

$8. National Bank of Commerce NY/Morgan Guaranty Trust (J. P. Morgan Bank - Equitable Life - Levi P. Morton are principal shareholders).

$9. Hanover Trust of NY (William and David Rockefeller & Chase National Bank NY are principal shareholders).

TIME LINE OF THE JEW-OWNED FEDERAL RESERVE BANK

1791-1811: Rothschilds’ First Bank of the United States.

1816-1836: Rothschilds’ Second Bank of the United States.

1837-1862: Free Banking Era - no formal Central Bank through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.

1862-1913: System of National Banks through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.

1913-Current: Federal Reserve Act effects a consortium of privately held Jewish & associated banks called the Federal Reserve Bank. The largest shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank are the Rothschilds of London holding 57% of the stock which is not available for public trading.

On May 23 1933, Congressman Louis T. McFadden brought impeachment charges against the members of the Federal Reserve Bank. A smear campaign against McFadden ensued and he was poisoned 3 years later.

JEWS RUN THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK

Here are the Jews that control the government of America:

1) Ben Shalom Bernanke: Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2020.

2) Donald L. Kohn: Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2016.

3) Randall S. Kroszner: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve.

4) Frederic S. Mishkin: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2014.

5) Alan Greenspan: Advisor to Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Recent Chairman.

HOW THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK WORKS

JEWISH BANKERS PRINT MONEY at heavily-armed & guarded Federal Reserve Bank buildings throughout the US. Then these Jewish bankers of the Federal Reserve Bank *loan* the money to the US government at *interest.*

Since the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (and all the others) is listed in Dun & Bradstreet. But according to Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue money and regulate its value.

Thus it is *illegal* for private interests to issue US money. But because influential Jews like Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff bribed into enactment the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank were to be kept a secret. Only recently have the Jewish stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank come to light.

International cooperation with the Jew-owned Federal Reserve Bank has been intense to coordinate currency. In 1985, officials from the JP Morgan Bank of NY met with the Credit Lyonnais Bank of France. They established the European Currency Unit Banking Association (ECUBA) to get world cooperation for a unified currency.

In October 1987, the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (AMUE), secretly met and recommended that the ECU (European Currency Unit) replace existing national currencies and that all European Central Banks be combined into one and issue the ECU as the official unified currency. This occurred in 1999 with the issuing of the Euro.

The plan of the international Jewish banking cabal is to have only 3 central banks in the world: The Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, and the Central Bank of Japan. All of these banks are headed by the Rothschilds.

And Next To Come Will Be The One World Government Run By Anti-Christian Jews.

Read the source article from Real Jew News with links here.

Related Articles

Pick-Pocketing the People: The ruling elite planned the global economic downturn. They timed the implementation and orchestration while controlling media coverage of it.

The Takeover of America, Republic Becomes Oligarchy: America has become an oligarchy (a government ruled by a powerful few) versus a Republic (a government limited by law) as the banking and Wall Street Masters of the Universe continue their tyranny.

P.S. Hey, we have to be slaves and not complain about it. Otherwise we'd be "anti-Semitic." It's "anti-Semitic" to notice what's happening and who's in charge, and it's "anti-Semitic" to complain about it. The FEMA camps will be full of "anti-Semites" otherwise known as "terrorists."

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

U.N. report condemns Israel for Gaza operation

(CNN) -- Israeli soldiers routinely and intentionally put children in harm's way during their 22-day offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a United Nations report made public Monday.

The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations "too numerous to list."

For example, on January 15, in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians' packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives, the 43-page report said.

They then forced the boy to walk in front of them in the town, it said. When the soldiers came under fire, "the boy remained in front of the group," the report said.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister called the report another example of the "one-sided and unfair" attitude of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which requested it.

The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons -- both younger than 11 -- emerged to look at the damage.

"As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing," the report said.

In the second, it said, "Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together.

"The eldest son was shouting in vain the word 'Children' in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally."

Source article is here.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Video Message from Parents of Rachel Corrie

Eyewitness in Gaza: The reality of a real bloodbath set in.

The following was written by Rose Mishaan, a participant on the recent National Lawyer's Guild delegation to Gaza. Rose is a student at the University of California Hastings College of Law. I know Rose from when we were both members of Jews Against the Occupation in New York. She sent this out as an email to friends and has given us permission to reprint it here. - Adam Horowitz

It took me a month to write this email. In that month, I've been through a whirlwind of emotions, trying to find away to process the things that I saw. I still haven't figured it out.

I went to Gaza with a group of lawyers to investigate violations of international law. We crossed into Gaza through the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah. At first we were fairly convinced we wouldn't get through. We had heard different stories of internationals trying to get through and then getting turned away -- they didn't have the proper credentials, they didn't have a letter from their embassy, etc. It made it all the more anti-climactic when we got through with no problem. just a minor 7-hour detainment at the border, which was really nothing at all. they said we were free to go. so we boarded a bus and drove the half-mile to the Palestinian side of the crossing. when we got there, we went through the world's one and only Palestinian Authority border crossing. we were the only ones there. they stamped all our passports and gave us a hero's welcome -- invited us to sit down for tea and have some desserts. they could not believe an American delegation was there, in Gaza. as far as we learned, we were only the second American delegation to enter Gaza since the offensive -- after a delegation of engineers. We were certainly the first and only delegation of American lawyers. while we were trying to avoid the mandatory Palestinian shmooze time with tea and snacks, waiting for our cabs to arrive to take us to our hotel, we felt a bomb explode. to our unexperienced senses, it felt like it was right under us. I got immediately anxious and decided we need to get out of there. our Palestinian hosts laughed at me kindly and said "don't worry this is normal here". somehow, not that comforting. we got in our two cabs and starting heading from the border to our hotel in Gaza City. the ride from Rafah to Gaza City was about 40 minutes. as soon as we left the border gates, we began to see the bombed out buildings. one of my companions yelled out "holy shit!" and we looked to where she was pointing and saw the giant crater in the building. then my other travel companion turned to her and said "you can't yell 'holy shit' every time you see a bombed out building. we'll all have heart attacks." and she was right. the entire 40-minute drive to Gaza City, our cab driver pointed out the sights around us. he explained what each bombed out building was, who was living there and what had been a big story in the news. all we saw was decimation. one building after another collapsed into rubble.

When we got to our hotel in Gaza City, I was surprised. It was standing -- no bomb craters, no burnt out sections. and it was still in business. we checked in and we had running water and electricity -- both things that I was unsure about before coming to Gaza. that first night we arrived we met with two United Nations representatives: one with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human RIghts and one with the UN Refugee and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza was clearly upset at the recent offensive. A well-spoken man with a strong commitment to human rights and international law, he told us about the UN schools that were hit during the onslaught. He kept saying that the "rule of law means you apply it to everyone equally". He badly wanted to see an end to Israeli impunity. We got a tour of the facility that was shelled during the offensive. We saw the hollowed out warehouse after it was shelled with white phosphorous and everything inside was destroyed -- medicines, food, spare automobile parts to keep their vehicles up and running (pictured above). John Ging told us about how the UN had called the Israelis after the first shell and told them not to target the UN compound, that there were gasoline tanks on the property. they received assurances that they would not be targeted. Moments later the Israelis shelled the exact area where the gas tanks were located with white phosphorous. the phosphorous hit the warehouses and UN staff risked their lives to move the gas tanks before the fire reached them, avoiding a massive explosion.

That first night in Gaza was almost surreal. It was so quiet, almost deafening. I was convinced that any moment a missile would come screeching through the air and shatter the night. there was a sense of waiting for something to happen. but nothing did. the night gave way to morning and I awoke in Gaza for the first time in my life.

The things we saw that morning would turn out to be the hardest. We went to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. In the parking lot we saw bombed out, twisted skeletons of ambulances before we were hurried into the building to meet with doctors. Standing in the middle of a care unit, I saw a little boy, about 5 years old, hobble down the hallway, holding his mother's hand. He had a leg injury and looked in pain. The doctors wanted to show us the white phosphorous cases, since we had asked about that. The doctor pointed to two rooms with patients we could talk to. There were two women in the first one. The one closest to the door just stared at us blankly, not saying anything. It turns out she lost her whole family during the assault. A few of us went into the next room. There we found Mohammad lying in bed -- heavily bandaged, missing his left eye. He told us the story of how his whole family was burned to death when two white phosphorous shells hit their family car. He was lucky enough to have been knocked out of the car by the first shell. He lay unconscious and burning on the ground, while several neighbors pulled him away. He didn't see his family die -- both parents, his brother, and his sister. they were in their car driving to a relative's house to get away from the shelling in their neighborhood. it was during what was supposed to be a 3-hour ceasefire. Their car only made it 70 meters. He and his brother were both in college. His brother was going to graduate this year. As he told us that, a fellow delegate, Linda, who had been translating, suddenly burst into tears. Mohammad grabbed her hand and told her it was ok. Strange how people ended up comforting us. The doctor came in and told us they were changing a child's dressing if we wanted to come see. We walked into a room to see a baby -- about 2 years old -- lying on a table. She suddenly sat up and I saw that one whole side of her face and head were severely burnt. I had assumed she was hit with a weapon of some kind, but it turns it was a classic case of "collateral damage": she had run up to her mom when they started bombing near the house, while her mom was cooking. Then a bomb exploded nearby and the burning oil in her mother's pan spilled all over this young girl's face. While we stood there, she just cried and called for her mom. We all stood watching, feeling helpless and guilty.

We left the hospital and went to Al-Zeytoun, a farming community on the southern outskirts of Gaza City. It was one of the hardest hit areas at the beginning of the ground invasion. The neighborhood was almost entirely inhabited by members of the extended Sammouni family. The town was in the news a lot after soldiers evacuated home after home of Sammounis into one house, that they then shelled, killing dozens of people. We walked up the dirt road and saw the rubble. Only one or two buildings left standing; the rest were completely decimated. Scattered tents served as makeshift shelters. We split up into teams of two and began interviewing survivors. We found two women sitting silently in front of the rubble that used to be someone's home. One of the women, Zahwa, described the night where she saw her husband executed in front of her with his hands above his head (Her house was destroyed the night the soldiers came through the neighborhood). She then huddled with her children in a back room of the house as soldiers shot through the two windows above them. She showed us the bullet holes in the wall of the house, the heap of rubble that used to be her house, and the wounds in her back from being grazed with bullets while she hunched over her children. Her 10-year-old son showed us the shrapnel wounds in his leg and proudly displayed the large piece of shrapnel that he single-handedly pulled out of his chest that night. His cousins then gave us a tour of one of the few houses left standing -- one that the soldiers had used as a base, after they rounded up all those in the neighborhood and demolished all the other houses. The house was a mess. All the family's possessions were thrown around the outside perimeter. Bags of feces from the soldiers were strewn around outside. The inside was ransacked. The soldiers had covered nearly every surface with graffiti: "death to the Arabs", "if it weren't for Arabs, the world would be a better place", "kill Arabs". I feverishly took notes and photographs of the stories of Zeytoun, knowing I did not want to stop and think about what had happened here.

Throughout the day, we felt distant bomb blasts. I still gave a little jump when I heard the tremors and I can't say they didn't make me nervous. But the Palestinians we were meeting with didn't bat an eyelid. They knew when they were in danger and they knew when it didn't matter. "Oh, they're just bombing the tunnels" or "that's all the way in the north" people would say. Cold comfort.

We met with paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society. They described how they were shot at, and sometimes hit, while trying to reach injured people. We met with human rights organizations who described the difficulties of trying to collect accurate information and trying to help everyone when there was such widespread devastation. We met with a psychiatrist in Gaza City who ran one of very few mental health centers there. He wondered how to treat a population of 1.5 million who were all suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. "Listen to the kids tell their stories" he told us. "They tell it like it happened to someone else". That's one of the symptoms of PTSD apparently. and we saw it again and again. Whether it was the little boy describing his father's execution in front of him, or kids showing us the shrapnel they pulled out of themselves and their dead relatives, or a little girl talking about how her house was destroyed -- none of them broke down, none of them cried, none of them seemed scared. There was complete detachment from the horror they were living and their identification with it. A scarred generation that will inherit this conflict.

I left Gaza by hitching a ride with a car full of BBC journalists. We headed in the Land Rover, with "TV" painted on the hood, down the coastal road that winds the length of Gaza. It was my first time seeing the Sea in Palestine, I remember thinking. what a strange feeling. To be in a country I knew so well, and yet be somewhere so completely unfamiliar. The privilege of having a chance to go there and the utter relief at being able to leave were competing in my head. The crossing back into Egypt was short and painless. But as soon as I saw the other side of Rafah again, I felt a deep ache of regret and guilt that didn't let up for weeks. Regret at having left before my work was done and guilt that I had wanted to get out of there.

Gaza was like nothing I'd ever seen. The reality of a very real bloodbath set in. I saw what this onslaught did to people -- real people. I looked into their eyes and heard their stories and saw their wounds. It made war realer than I ever wanted it to be. There still isn't yet a day that goes by that I don't think about what I saw and heard, and feel guilty about leaving, and sad that people are still living with such pain, fear, trauma and loss. I think the hardest part is knowing that as a world, we utterly failed the Palestinians of Gaza. We stood and watched them die and justified our own inaction. It is something that should bring a little shame to us all.

Source article from Mondoweiss is located here.

P.S. "It is something that should bring a little shame to us all." ... a little shame?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Finally, an Anti-Zionist Party is Launched.


In an attampt to rid it's country from the control of Zionist lobby groups and organizations, France has launched a new Anti Zionist Political Party called "Parti Anti Sioniste." Below are the parties goals taken from a translated page:

EFFORTS AND AMBITIONS OF ANTI-ZIONIST PARTY IN FRANCE:

• To eliminate the Zionist interference in the affairs of the Nation.

• Denounce all the politicians who are advocating Zionism.

• Eliminating all forms of Zionism in the nation.

• Prevent companies and institutions to contribute to the war effort of a foreign nation that does not respect international law.

• Unleashing our state, our government and our institutions of the grip and the pressure of Zionist organizations.

• Unleashing the media for a plurality of information to promote freedom of expression.

• Promote the free expression of the politics, culture, philosophy and religion and free of Zionism.

• Restoring power in France and the French under the new geopolitical and economic rules on the big issues that engage the responsibility of the Nation.

• Do not engage France in the wars of colonization and repatriate our armed forces stationed in Africa, Afghanistan and around the world.

• Requiring a referendum for any new commitment of France abroad.

• Establish a bill to ban dual nationality to participate in war without explicit mandate of the Nation.

• Prohibit any militia whatever their faith.

• Establish a national dialogue to raise awareness and a society that excludes any advocacy of Zionism.

• Set the mode of voting by proportional representation so that all segments of society are represented.

• Advocate for the establishment of a society of justice, progress and tolerance.

Original, untranslated text is here.

I WANT ONE OF THESE FOR MY COUNTRY !!!... except for the ban on militias (i.e. the right to bear arms). OUTLAW ZIONISM NOW !!!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Zionism: The Game is Over

Zionist influx into Palestine started in 1882. There were 6 waves of Jewish immigration between 1882 and 1948. As a result of these waves, the number of Jews living in Palestine increased to about 650,000.

During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists asked for the creation of a state in the territory that includes all of Mandate Palestine, Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Golan Heights and part of Western Jordan along a line parallel to the Hijaz railway and ends in Aqaba. From there, the line goes northwest to Al Arish in Egypt. (David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, p. 20. See also: Simha Flappan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: 1987, p. 17)

In 1948, Ben-Gurion considered acceptance of a Jewish state in part of Palestine as a bridgehead for future expansion whenever the time was right. His vision was spelled out in a letter to his son, Amos, stating that “A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning… We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring… We shall organize a modern defense force, a select army…and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if there is a state…” (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 91 - 92)

In a round table meeting with the French at the Sévres Conference, Ben-Gurion proposed a plan for settling all the issues in the Middle East. The plan included eliminating Nasser in Egypt and partition of Jordan, with the West Bank going to Israel and the East Bank to Iraq. In exchange, Iraq would sign a peace treaty with Israel and undertake to absorb the Palestinian refugees. Moreover, Ben-Gurion requested that Israel would annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani , with a Christian state established in the rest of the country. Ben-Gurion added that the Suez Canal would enjoy international status, that the Straits of Tiran would be under Israeli control, and that Syria should be placed under a pro-Western ruler in order to stabilize the Syrian regime. Official confirmation of the Sévres protocol was received by Ben-Gurion on 26 October and was warmly congratulated by Menachem Begin. (Ibid, pp. 236-244)

Golda Meir even denied the mere existence of the Palestinians by stating that there is no such thing as the Palestinians.

Within 5 decades, the Zionist dream began to evaporate.

In spite of all the Zionist atrocities aimed at Ethnic Cleansing, Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if the Palestinian Refugees living outside Palestine were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them.

In spite of having a large army equipped with all the high-tech weaponry provided by the U.S., Israel failed to deter or stop Arab resistance.

In March, 1968, Israel attacked the village of Karama on the East Bank of the Jordan and faced a bloody and heroic stand by the Palestinians. This battle gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a psychological boost and increased its influence.

On 24 May 2000, Israel was obliged to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, which was occupied since 1978.

On 12 July 2006, Israel started an ‘open war’ against Lebanon. The war stopped on 14 August 2006. During this war, another massacre was committed in Kana, about 54 innocent civilians, including about 37 children, were killed in an air raid, and there was a lot of damage and destruction. However, Israel failed in achieving its goal of ending Hizbullah.

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against the Gaza Strip and committed a massacre killing more than 1300 men, women and children and injuring more that 5500. The war was ended on 18 January 2009 without achieving Israel’s goal of ending Hamas.

The game is over. The Zionist lie of a ‘land without a people for a people without a land’ did not fool any one. What we are witnessing these days is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, which will not take long: 5 - 20 years…

Source article by Nizar Skhini is located here.

P.S. Zionists, the gig is up. Pack your bags and come back home to New Yawk. I think your fellow supremacists will have you back.

Dearest Palestine: For Rachel Corrie and Palestine


Author of the video clip: I made this for Rachel Corrie and Palestine.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Logically Disputing the Illogic of Zionism

Adam Horowitz has done a lot of speaking on Israel/Palestine and is regularly asked, "But Mr. Horowitz, tell us what you think of the two-state solution!?" Recently, for instance, he was asked this question by a pro-Israel student at Temple University. What's his answer? Horowitz:

There is a short answer and a longer answer to this question. The short answer is that I don't take a position on one state or two states. In the end I'm not invested in one end product, but in ending the conflict. For that to happen, there are several principles that any just solution will have to meet. Some of those principles are equality (in the personal and collective sense) and self-determination. These are principles that can be met in theory in any configuration of solutions, whether they be one state, two states, a confederation, etc. I have heard compelling arguments for the need for one democratic state in Israel/Palestine and for separate states called Israel and Palestine. In the end it is up to people living on the ground to find a solution that works for them.

From our perspective in the US we just need to know that regardless of what the solution looks like, the conflict will not end until these principles are met. Also, it has to be said that the current "two state solution" that is being touted by the US, the Quartet, and some Israelis (ie Olmert and Livni) does not meet these conditions. Their two-state solution is being used to formalize the unequal relationship between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, not end it. It will only deepen the conflict.

The longer answer gets to the real reason I think people tend to ask this question, especially if they're confrontational: they are asking if I support a Jewish state. The simple answer is no. This is for the reasons stated above: it is impossible for there to be equality in Israel/Palestine while there is a state that offers special and exclusive rights to Jews over other people. This is the case inside Israel, where Jewish citizens enjoy special rights over Palestinian citizens, inside the occupied territories where Palestinians live under military occupation, and in the diaspora where Palestinians' collective rights are ignored while Jewish people are offered incredible privileges. The example I give for this is that, as a Jew, I can move to Israel tomorrow and become a citizen with incentives and benefits from the state, while my Palestinians friends who still have the key to their family homes in Jaffa or Haifa would be arrested at the border if they tried to return.

That is currently the situation in Israel/Palestine. The conflict, and the suffering that comes from it, will not end until this system ends.

Does this mean that the Jews will be thrown to the wolves? No. I tell my questioners if their real concern is for Jewish safety, it is a concern I understand. I also understand why people would think that a Jewish state is necessary to ensure Jewish safety. But in fact the opposite is true. Setting up a system of perpetual domination of one people over another can only lead to endless conflict. The missiles hitting Sderot in southern Israel from the besieged captives of Gaza is one example of this.

I tell them if they're interested in Jewish safety, then they need to be working for a just solution to the conflict in Israel/Palestine because that is what will end the violence. If they are concerned about Jewish safety then they need to be concerned about Palestinian safety. Jews will feel safe in Israel/Palestine once everyone feels safe, but not before.

If instead they are simply concerned with there being a "Jewish state," then they are consigning the people of Israel/Palestine to endless violence. Right now the logic of a Jewish state is leading Israeli politicians to propose kicking non-Jewish citizens out of the state and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the occupied territories. This is the process that has to be stopped. The future of Israel/Palestine depends on it.

Source article from Mondoweiss is here.

P.S. A two-state solution is no solution. Jewish apartheid must be dismantled.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Freeman. Obama. Jones..... aipac


AIPAC... How could Jones miss it?

Freeman's Case Sheds Light on Dual Loyalty Elephant

Charles Lane in the Washington Post and David Rothkopf on Foreign Policy make the same angry point: the Freeman affair has devolved into a regrettable argument about whether Israel's supporters have dual loyalties. Lane wants Obama to repudiate the charge for the health of our "political culture."

Even if Freeman had a perfectly legitimate grievance, even if he had been maligned, he wouldn't be entitled to respond in kind -- much less to brand large numbers of his fellow citizens as fifth columnists.

These two writers are not the first to get up in arms about what they see as a false issue. Gabriel Schoenfeld and Alan Dershowitz both responded to Walt and Mearsheimer 2 and 3 years back by saying that the scholars were implicitly accusing Israel supporters of suffering from dual loyalty conflicts, an antisemitic canard.

The answer to all these men is: Of course American supporters of Israel are vulnerable to a dual loyalty problem. Many supporters of the Iraq war have exhibited the dual-loyalty problem. For the record:

--Joe Klein wrote last year that the fact that Jewish neoconservatives pushed the Iraq war as a way of magically reforming the Middle East inevitably raised the question of their "divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel."

--John Judis of the New Republic has said that "dual loyalty" had become an "inescapable part" of the Jewish organizational support for Israel--and he included surely his own boss Marty Peretz.

--Harvard Yiddishist Ruth Wisse said at the Center for Jewish History that young American Jews should consider themselves part of Israel's "army" and just give up a couple of years of their lives to fight as advocates here, particularly against Arab voices on campus. Eric Alterman (a board member of "J Street," the alternative lobby) spotted this and said it was a call to dual loyalty. (I wrote about this here.)

--New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is a major supporter of Jewish and American institutions. His wife Myra told the Israeli press on a visit there that her sons could fight for Israel not for the U.S. "As for joining the army, over Vietnam, I would have had an issue, because I didn't believe in it. The same goes for the war in Iraq. I don't know why we're there. I would hate to have one of my sons fighting there. Iran's the problem, not Iraq. But, as far as fighting for Israel is concerned, there is no problem."

This list could go on and on. It is the reason that ex-CIA man Michael Scheuer has said that dual loyalty is an issue, and Chas Freeman has said of the foreign service, "There has been, historically, a sense that it's better not to put ardently pro-Israeli American Jews to the test by putting them in the middle of U.S.-Israeli relations, where they will anguish over where their duty lies."

This issue was created by the Zionists. Anti-Zionist Jews identified this as a problem again and again in the first half of the 1900s; they said that creating a Jewish state with a Law of Return, under which I can move to Israel as a citizen tomorrow and Mustafa Barghouti who was born in Jerusalem cannot go there, would generate poisonous questions about loyalty.

Those poisonous questions were put off for many years, until the Iraq War, when as Joe Klein wisely observed, the neocons' plans for remaking the Middle East could not be separated from their religious devotion to Israel. Or as Elliott Abrams, a high U.S. official in the Iraq war dream, wrote in the late 90s, “Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live.... [Jews] are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people.”

If that kind of religious statement is not a recipe for dual loyalty, nothing is. The issue came up during the Freeman controversy when Steve Walt quipped that Freeman had spent four decades in service of the American government, while Freeman-critic Jeffrey Goldberg's idea of service was going off to serve in the Israeli army. Jacob Heilbrunn defended Goldberg in the National Interest (!), saying Goldberg's service was an act of "idealism."

Yes it was an act of idealism: of Zionist ideals, which led Goldberg to serve in an Israeli prison where Palestinians were abused.

The difficulty here, just as the anti-Zionists predicted it would be, is that the Jewish state with its discriminatory Law of Return has cast a regrettable shadow over many public American Jews' motivation. This is the reason that the banker Jacob Schiff, who saved my Russian ancestors from pogroms, wanted nothing to do with Zionism. Or for that matter why Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who built the Times into the greatest newspaper in the world, called himself an anti-Zionist. They were loyal to their homeland, the U.S., they cried. Today when Michael Oren serves in the Israeli army and then proselytizes Americans about our historical love of Zion going back to George Washington, can he be trusted? When Time Magazine's Matt Cooper, who says his grandparents were "fervent Zionists," is fed the Valerie Plame info by Scooter Libby, a fellow Jew, during the Iraq war disaster, and I ask him whether he's also a Zionist and he declines to answer me, I find that unsettling. Ditto the commitment of Rahm Emanuel, or Howard Berman.

We are talking about this for the same reason that Barack Obama was able to defeat Hillary Clinton: because the Iraq war is the greatest disaster in a generation. I could cite countless examples of Jewish neocons/liberal hawks who supported that disaster, including Tom Friedman, Paul Berman, Bill Kristol, Lawrence Kaplan, David Frum, Doug Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle, who said that the fact that Saddam Hussein had paid for suicide bombers to go into Israel was a reason for us to go to war with Iraq. To which the only response must be emphatic: Israel's war is not our war; and the confusion over this matter has killed a great number of innocent people.

As the Freeman case shows, the Iraq war chapter will not be closed until the special relationship with Israel is publicly debated, and till the dual-loyalty issue too is explored. Does my opinion carry influence? Don't worry, reader, it does not: I have said as much for years, and god knows the politicians and journalists and intellectuals have ignored me for years; and even realists Walt and Mearsheimer sidestepped this issue--leaving me, a lefty, to talk about "the American interest"! And still, the issue edges into our debate, for a simple reason: it is important [and still screaming to be addressed].

Source article from Mondoweiss is here.

Obama Will Represent One Minority Group

Obama’s stimulus plan is a scheme hatched by Jewish financial insiders. Representing the interests of Wall Street’s Jewish financial institutions, a group of Zionist Jews, (loyal to Jewish interests before those of America), have been appointed by Obama as his economic advisors: see them listed here.

All For Israel


Plea To US Military from Subverted Nation on Vimeo

Jews Ask Pope for Holocaust Studies in Schools


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Israel's religious leaders asked Pope Benedict on Thursday to make Holocaust studies a required subject in Catholic schools, saying it could help combat anti-Semitism in future generations.

The two sides resumed a dialogue that was interrupted by the case of a Holocaust-denying bishop, which brought Catholic-Jewish relations to their lowest point in half a century.

The Israelis also asked that the Vatican take a strong stand against the draft final declaration of next month's U.N. conference on racism, a statement some countries view as hostile to Israel.

"May we suggest for your consideration that the history and the moral import of the Shoah ... become a required subject for inclusion in the curriculum of students at all Catholic schools the world over," Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen asked the pope during a meeting at the Vatican, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

Cohen, who is chief rabbi of Haifa, said such a move would "reinforce your strong stand against Holocaust denial and declaring anti-Semitism as a sin against God."

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Congress, told reporters afterwards: "I hope a recommendation (from the pope on Holocaust studies in Catholic schools) will come out of this latest crisis. That will be a silver lining to the cloud."

GAS CHAMBERS

The meeting between representatives of Israel's chief Rabbinate and Vatican officials on Wednesday and Thursday was to have taken place last month but was postponed by the Jewish side because of the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson.

On January 24, Benedict lifted the excommunication of Williamson and three other traditionalist bishops to try to heal a 20-year-old rift that began when they were thrown out of the Church for being ordained without permission. Williamson has said he believed there were no gas chambers and that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, compared with the figure of 6 million accepted by mainstream historians.

The pope has since made several major declarations to repudiate Williamson's views and condemn anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

On Thursday, Vatican officials announced Benedict would pay a visit to Rome's main synagogue in the autumn. "There's no firm date fixed yet," the chief Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told Italian media.

The Jewish delegation also asked the pope to instruct Vatican diplomats to take a strong stand against the current draft of the final statement of the U.N. Conference on Racism due to be held in Geneva April 20-24, known as Durban II.

The Vatican has said it will attend the conference but hoped for a change in the wording of its final declaration. Both Italy and the United States have said they will not attend unless there is a change of wording.

Source article is here.

P.S. Rabbis to Pope: Think about it, is the world really round? Does the earth revolve around the sun? Think how much prestige your church has lost since it decided to go along with the world's opinions.

Friday, March 13, 2009

American Critically Wounded at Israel Apartheid Wall Protest


13th Friday 2009, Ni’lin Village: An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.

Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister.

The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.

Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.

Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.

Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.

Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.

Source article is here.

Fallujah: The Real Story

Two months after the US launched its biggest ever assault on Fallujah, what exactly happened inside the city has, until now, remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, Guardian films reveals the true story.

Video report is here.

It was billed as a resounding military success. Over 1,200 insurgents were meant to have been killed and another 2,000 trapped inside Fallujah. But now this version of events is being challenged. Far from being crushed, rebels claim they left the city in an organised withdrawal. "It was a tactical move," explains insurgent leader Alazaim Abuthe. "The fighters decided to redeploy to Amiriya." Before they left, fighters booby-trapped many bodies. People are too scared to move them so the corpses lie rotting all over the city. Rabid dogs feed off them and then attack returning residents. Far from stabilising Iraq the assault on Falluja has fanned the flames of civil war.

Freeman Exposes AIPAC to Light of Day

The nixing of Charles "Chas" Freeman from a post as head of the National Intelligence Council is not, as is commonly averred, a victory for the Israel lobby. It is, instead, a Pyrrhic victory – that is, a victory so costly that it really amounts to a defeat for them. Sure, they managed to keep out a trenchant critic of their Israel-centric and grossly distorted view of a proper American foreign policy, and, yes, they managed to smear him and put others on notice that someone with his views is radioactive, as far as a high-level job in the foreign policy establishment is concerned. And yet – and yet ….

They – the Lobby – have now been forced out in the open. "A lobby," says Steve Rosen, the ringleader of the "get Freeman" lynch mob, "is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun." If so, then the Israel lobby is slated for oblivion, because as frenetically – and pathetically – as they tried to mask the centrality of their involvement, and as much as they tried to make this about other issues (his alleged ties to Saudi Arabia, his supposed views on China), everybody knows it was really all about Israel and Freeman's contemptuous view of the "special relationship" which requires us giving Tel Aviv a blank check, moral as well as monetary. As a foreign policy realist, he thinks we ought to put our own interests first, in the Middle East and elsewhere, not those of a foreign country, no matter how much political clout – and campaign cash – its American fifth column can muster.

This, in the current atmosphere in Washington, is "extremism," a charge that hung over Freeman's appointment from the get-go. Jonathan Chait, writing in the Washington Post, went so far as to call Freeman a "fanatic." A charge which seems counterintuitive, considering that we're talking about an adherent of a foreign policy perspective that coldly calculates American interests in what the righteous would disdain as shockingly amoral terms. Oh, says Chait, he's not like those neocons, with their "simplistic" division of the world into "good guys" and "bad guys." No, instead, Freeman doesn't recognize any "good guys" he's the sort who opposed our bombing of the former Yugoslavia and our support to the narco-Mafioso "Kosovo Liberation Army," the precursor to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which, likewise, lured us into a foreign war under false pretenses. But the Kosovo war "halted mass slaughter," says Chait: apparently the death of hundreds of Serbians at American hands is a slaughter not considered "mass" enough to merit mention. Yet the alleged "genocide" the Serbs were supposedly committing turned out, in the end, to inhabit the same nonexistent country as Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction." It was, in short, war propaganda, of the sort we have become all too familiar with of late.

To be sure, Chait says: "Realism has some useful insights. For instance, realists accurately predicted that Iraqis would respond to a U.S. invasion with less than unadulterated joy."

This is a lot more than Chait managed to do: to this day, he defends his forceful support for the biggest strategic blunder in American military history. "I don't think you can argue that a regime change in Iraq won't demonstrably and almost immediately improve the living conditions of the Iraqi people," Chait said on television as our troops massed for the attack. No one would think of uttering such nonsense today – at least with a straight face. Oh, but don't forget, it's those nasty realist ideologues – not the neocons or their liberal interventionist allies – who are the real danger.

As the Iraq disaster unfolded, the magazine of which Chait is employed as a senior editor declared "the central assumption underlying this magazine's strategic rationale for war now appears to have been wrong," and yet "if our strategic rationale for war has collapsed, our moral one has not." Two years later, however, Chait and his fellow editors issued a shamefaced apology: "The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war."

The "liberal" interventionism that Chait invoked in support of the war actually flew the flag of "humanitarianism." One million Iraqi deaths later, such a claim has a rather sinister ring to it. He also invoked the principle of "international law" – this, in support of a lawless occupation and an unprovoked attack on a people who had no ability to strike back. "Multilateralism" was another "principle" invoked by Chait, the great liberal – and yet who else but a genuine fanatic would make such an argument about a war that had little to no support from our allies?

Chait is unconcerned about the actual fanatics who have done so much damage – with his help – to the country and its interests abroad. Forget the neocons, his erstwhile allies, and let's concentrate on the real danger, the enemies of the Israel lobby:

"Taken to extremes, realism's blindness to morality can lead it wildly astray. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, both staunch realists, wrote ‘The Israel Lobby,' a hyperbolic attack on Zionist political influence. The central error of their thesis was that, since America's alliance with Israel does not advance American interests, it could be explained only by sinister lobbying influence. They seemed unable to grasp even the possibility that Americans, rightly or wrongly, have an affinity for a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships. Consider, perhaps, if eunuchs tried to explain the way teenage boys act around girls."

Putting Israel first is as natural as heterosexuality – but only if you work for Marty Peretz. Why Chait and his confreres continue their denialism when it comes to the demonstrable power of the Israel lobby – which, after all, has succeeded in blocking Freeman, and many others from positions of influence – is beyond me. AIPAC went out of its way to deny any hand in the lynch mob that went after Freeman, and yet, as Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan point out, this is just a subterfuge: their top media relations guy has his fingerprints all over this hit job, and a very effective job it was.

Effective, yet oddly forced and unconvincing: for example, it seems curious to argue that Freeman is afflicted by a "blindness to morality" when it is precisely a sense of justice that gives rise to Freeman's apparent sympathy [.pdf] for the plight of Palestinians who chafe under the constraints of life in the occupied territories. It is precisely a sense of offended morality that drives the vast Arab anger at Israel, and causes realists like Freeman to question our unbending fealty to the inhumane and unsustainable policies of the Israeli government toward their Palestinian helots. If anyone is afflicted with moral blindness, when it comes to this question, it is Chait and the editors of the magazine for which he works.

Chait then cites Freeman's by now infamous remarks on the Tiananmen Square incident, and yet this China trope was never really all that convincing. To begin with, even in the truncated quote served up as evidence of his supposed pro-crackdown views, it is clear that Freeman was not expressing his personal view, but rather that of the average Chinese, as perceived through his own eyes:

"[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than – as would have been both wise and efficacious – to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action."

The phrase "in this optic" indicates – to any literate person – that the author is not speaking in his own voice, but in what he imagines to be the voice of the Chinese people. Does Chait imagine we're too stupid to see this? I'm afraid he and the Washington crowd he epitomizes believe precisely that. But they'd better watch it: if they get too careless, someone may call them out on it – and then they'd have to admit that Freeman's alleged "links" to China had nothing to do with the real objections of his detractors. So, he served on the advisory board of a Chinese company – so what? If everyone with a commercial connection to China had to drop out of consideration for government work, a large proportion of those currently working in Washington would be missing.

The complete disingenuousness with which Chait made his argument is so transparent that it makes me wonder if, perhaps, the Israel lobby has abandoned all attempts at subtlety, and is now working on the assumption that it doesn't matter any more if they come out in the open. The nightflower has been exposed to the light of day, and, rather than wilt, perhaps its nurturers have decided that it's better to brave the sun. That's why the Mearsheimer-Walt book has become such a target, to the point that anyone who praises it, as Freeman has done, is deemed unfit for office in Washington. This explains why former AIPAC top lobbyist Steve Rosen, the indicted spy who stole classified information on behalf of Israel, openly led the anti-Freeman movement (see this timeline) and didn't even try to hide his key role in the affair.

The Lobby was desperate to keep Freeman out of the NIC because it's an agency that provides key intelligence for the President and Congress. If you'll recall, that's how the War Party lured us into fighting an unnecessary war against Iraq – by manipulating the intelligence, and even resorting to forgery to achieve their ends. With Freeman at the helm of the intelligence-gathering machinery, they'd never be able to pull if off again. In his absence – well, they just might. That's just what they're getting ready to do in the case of Iran, which, we are told, is gathering "weapons of mass destruction." Part of the NIC's job is to prepare the daily presidential briefings, and with such access to the President, Freeman would have been in a good position to block the War Party's machinations. Which is why Chait's parting salvo is such an outrage:

"This is the portrait of a mind so deep in the grip of realist ideology that it follows the premises straight through to their reductio ad absurdum. Maybe you suppose the National Intelligence Council job is so technocratic that Freeman's rigid ideology won't have any serious consequences. But think back to the neocon ideologues whom Bush appointed to such positions. That didn't work out very well, did it?"

The neocons uphold a set of beliefs, they have an ideology: so too do the realists believe in a comprehensive worldview. However, the question is: what do they believe? Chait only mentions two realist principles: the pursuit of American interests abroad, and hostility to those who would put the interests of "a fellow imperfect democracy" above the realists' "cold analysis." Yet rational analysis, however "cold" its temperature may be, seems a necessary antidote to the hysteria that followed in the wake of 9/11. And as for that "imperfect democracy" of Israel – what will Chait and his fellow "liberals" do when Avigdor Lieberman becomes its public as well as its private face?

Freeman himself said it best in his statement explaining his withdrawal:

"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."

The real fanatics are the Israel-firsters, who have used every subterfuge, no matter how low, to maintain their parasitic grip on the American policymaking process. The really dangerous ideologues are the Likudniks and their American amen corner who willfully distort and deform American policy into a means to empower and succor a militaristic settler colony that is increasingly anti-democratic and aggressive. The Freeman affair has exposed the Israel lobby for precisely what they are: it has flushed them out of the woodwork, and brought them in from the shadows. That in itself is a great victory, one that means much more in the longterm than anyone presently imagines.

Source article by Justin Raimundo is here.

Other related and poignant articles are here and here.

P.S. I like the fact that the rats have been exposed to the light of day. Can we now pretend they don't exist?... or that we don't have a rat problem?

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Dick Cheney Really Likes Hunting

At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersch: "After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving."

Source article is here.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Arming Terrorist Israel: Should we be asking why they "hate us"?

Since their occupation of Palestine in 1948 to establish illegal Israel in the heart of the Arab World until the present, Zionist Israelis had initiated seven wars against their Arab neighbors. Six of those were waged after 1967 to maintain their occupation of the rest of Palestine, Lebanese Sheb'a Farms, and Syrian Golan Heights; formally recognized by the international community as an occupation.

Israel had maintained its occupation of the land for the last sixty years. The question that poses itself, here, is how a small state like Israel, 7 million Zionist Jews in an area of 8 thousand square miles (excluding the 1967 occupied territories), could maintain such an occupation against hundreds of millions of Arabs and against the disapproval of the civic (not political) international community? Bullying with extreme brutal force is the answer. Israel is a military society with every Zionist Israeli citizen, from childhood to old age, being militaristic in one form or another. Israel possesses all kinds of weapons including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as nuclear and chemical weapons.

Israel did not become the fourth largest army in the world by its own merit, but by the Western countries supplying it with all kinds of weapons. In its February 23rd report "Foreign Arms Supplies To Israel/Gaza Fueling Conflict" amnestyusa. org named 18 EU member states, which authorized 1,018 arms export licenses to Israel worth a little less than 200 million Euros. All these arms exports are in violation of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports under Criterion 2, which states that member states are supposed to "deny an export license if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression or be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law". Israel had committed such violations throughout its entire existence.

France, Germany, and Romania were the top three arms suppliers to Israel worth of 126 million Euros, 28 million Euros, and 17 million Euros respectively. Other significant arms suppliers to Israel since 2001 also include alphabetically Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Columbia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, India, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, and UK.

The report also indicated the well-known fact that "Since 2001, the USA has been by far the major supplier of conventional arms to Israel" It also stated the logical conclusion that "Put simply, Israel's military intervention in the Gaza Strip has been equipped to a large extent by US-supplied weapons, munitions and military equipment paid for with US taxpayers' money" What the report failed to indicate is that Israel had violated all the US laws governing arms transfers.

Examining the American military aid to Israel we find that since the end of WWII Israel had been the largest recipient of US aid (Armed & Dangerous Report). From 1949-2007 Israel had received more than $101 billion in total US economic and military aid. A previous Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two countries started phasing out the economic aid and increasing the military aid, and in 2008 all US aid to Israel turned into military aid only. The current MOU, singed by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns in August 2007, has increased military aid to Israel by 25% a year for the next ten years FY2009-2018, totaling to $30 billion.

During the Bush administration 2001-2007 American military aid to Israel came under three primary programs; Foreign Military Sales (FMS) ran through the Pentagon totaled $25.2 billion in arms sales and contracts, Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) ran through the States Department totaled $6.16 billion in weapons and equipment, and Excess Defense Articles (EDA) also ran through the Pentagon totaled $36 million in used weapons and equipment. The total comes to a little more than $31.4 billion.

The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) provided Israel with air, missile & munitions, naval, design, vehicles, and miscellaneous military aid. Israel received $19.81 billion for their air forces that included F-35 joint strike fighters, C-130J-30 aircrafts, JP-8 aviation jet fuel, and T-6A Texan aircrafts. In missiles and munitions Israel received $2.73 billion worth of GBU-28 & 39 small diameter bombs, TOW, Hellfire, bunker buster munitions, AMRAAM, Harpoon, Sidewinder, JDAM's, and MK-80 series. US gave Israel $1.9 billion worth of the new series (Littoral) naval combat ships, $164 million worth of troop carrier armored vehicles and trucks, and $253 million worth of miscellaneous in the form of Patriot Missiles upgrade and M72A7 Light Anti-Armor weapons. Also included in this FMS package were $350 million worth of design and construction of two infantry bases.

The Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) program contained about three hundred different categories of weapons transfer to Israel. The main top ten categories for FY2001-2006 were $557,896 million in aircraft spare parts, $449 million in missile spare parts, $439 million in engine jet F-100 spare parts, $254 million in engine jet F-100 series (F-15 & F-16), $210 million in ship components and spare parts, $186 million in aircraft fighter F-15 spare parts, $163 million in electronics components and spare parts, $128 million in ammunition raw materials, and $120 million in training equipment.

The Excess Defense Articles (EDC) program shipped to Israel $36 million worth of used Cobra Helicopters, personnel carriers, carrier command posts, and miscellaneous articles.

The most outrageous American military aid to Israel is the billions of Dollars worth of refined fuel to the Israeli army. Israel's own oil refineries in Haifa and Ashdod, which could supply Israeli military with all its fuel needs, are instead producing and selling its refined products on the open market. The Israeli army gets all its military fuel from the USA through the FMS program. The US Defense Department uses American tax money to buy oil crude from Arab Gulf States, ship it to American refineries to refine it, and then ship it to Israel.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, from 2004 to 2008 the Bush administration had granted the Israeli army 500 million gallons of oil products worth $1.1 billion. During this period the American tax payers were faced with energy crises and had to pay $4 per gallon of gas at the pump while Israel was getting free gas from the Bush administration. Somebody has to pay for this gas, and it wasn't the Israelis.

Moreover, the US provides loan guarantees to Israel so that Israel can take out loans in the international money market with lower interest rates, and if Israel happens to default on any of these loans the US will bail Israel out with American tax money similar to the latest $700 billion bailout for the American banks. There is a condition on these loan guarantees. It states that these loans can only be used to support the activities within the sovereign areas in Israel (pre-1967 war), and cannot be used in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is a facetiously misleading condition, since such loans can free other monies in the Israeli budget to be used in building illegal colonies (settlements) in the occupied territories.

The US has three laws that govern arms transfer to other countries. The first is the Arms Export Control Act (P.L.80-829). This law states that American weapons given or sold to any foreign country can be used only for legitimate self-defense or for internal security. They are not to be used in occupational operations.

The second is the Foreign Assistance Act (P.L.97-195), which states that any country is not illegible for any form of US aid if it engages in consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. The third is the Leahy Law (Foreign Ops Appropriations Act). This is an annual part of the Foreign Appropriations Act, and states that no aid will be given to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights. Expanding their occupation of the land the Israelis had violated numerous UN Resolutions, broke international laws as well as their own local laws, violated all human rights, committed grave war crimes, and perpetrated terrorism against Arabs in general and Palestinian Arabs in specific.

It has been, numerously, documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international NGOs that Israel had consistently violated international laws and human rights since 1948. In all its seven wars Israel, contrary to the false Israeli/American propaganda, had initiated the conflict in one way or another. Israel had attacked all its neighbors, committed war crimes, and occupied parts of their land. The Israelis had evicted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their country, completely wiped off many Palestinian towns and built Israeli colonies in their place, had stolen Palestinian farm land and forcefully controlled the economy. Israel had shoved thousands of Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters into prisons, and kept the rest of the Palestinian populations confined into open air virtual town-prisons within a separation wall.

Attacking Palestinian civilians, mainly defenseless children and women, has become the daily entertainment of Israeli government -backed and armed extreme Zionist colonizing terrorists (settlers?). Israeli soldiers developed the sport of hunting (shooting) Palestinian children on their way to schools or while playing in front of their homes. The Israeli army is using the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories and its Palestinian inhabitants as testing fields and subjects for theirs and for the American newly developed weapons as was exhibited in Israel's latest 22-days onslaught and massacres in Gaza.

Successive Israeli governments had consistently sent their armies to massacre Palestinian civilians. Israeli army had used all types of American supplied weapons; including depleted uranium tipped bombs and missiles, DIME bombs, chemical weapons such as phosphorous bombs and conventional weapons, to specifically and deliberately target Palestinian children and women. We need only go back to the Israeli last two wars; July 2006 against Lebanon and December 2008 against Gaza, still fresh in memory, to witness clear evidence of Israel's terrorism, war crimes, disrespect and contempt of international laws and human rights.

The driving force for the Zionist Israeli crimes and terrorism has been the extreme racist religious ideology of establishing a pure theocratic "Jewish" state for a prejudice- god's chosen people "narcissist Zionist Jews" in the real-estate- brokering-god's promised land of Greater Israel "Eretz Israel" extending from Nile to Euphrates. This theocratic dream necessitates a holy war (not the first one against the Middle East) to evict and remove the original inhabitants of the land to make living space for world Jewry to come and live in this Promised Land. This is how Israelis perceive their "final solution" to their "Palestinian problem"; destruction, massacres and mass evictions.

Although Israel has violated all EU and US arms transfer laws yet none had conducted any investigation to hold Israel accountable to these laws. The two rare incidents when under pressure the American State Department investigated Israeli violations where completely suppressed and quashed. The first was in 2002 when Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza City in order to extra-judicially assassinate a Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh, and killed 14 other civilians, women and children, in the process. This investigation was quashed by none other than John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the time. The investigation was never sent to the Congress in violation of US laws.

The second investigation was in 2006 when Israel dropped an estimated one million cluster bombs on the civilian areas of South Lebanon in the last 72 hours of the war, even after a seize-fire was agreed upon. This was made a top secret State Department investigation and was released to only a few senior members of the Cogress such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and "Zionist" Joe Biden, the present Vice President. Needless to say that this investigation had never came to light.

Israel is a terrorist entity without any specific borders. It is an expansionist colonizing regime. Its successive governments had disregarded all UN resolutions, broken international laws, violated all human rights, committed holocaustal-level genocides, and perpetrated war crimes against all its neighbors and against mother earth and against the environment.

Yet the Western political power elites justify Israeli terror as a self-defense, and keep transfering more devastating arms to this terrorist entity to wage more future wars and to wreck more havoc in the Arab World. They also distort facts and describe the victims of the Israeli terror, the Palestinians, as terrorists, deny them their legitimate right to bear arms for self-defense, and send their naval war machines and serveillance equipment to tighten the illegal Israeli blockade against Gaza Strip under the guise of preventing "arms smuggling", while at the same time shedding some crockodile tears and call for humanitarian aid to Gaza's Palestinians.

To the Arabs of the Middle East, Israel seems to be a military tool for the Western countries. Hatred towards these Western political regimes is the natural consequences of arming Israel. Should we keep asking "why do they hate us" any more?

Source article is here.