This is the real israel.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- A Hebrew website unveiled on Sunday new photos showing sadist Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip humiliating and scoffing at blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners, while Al-Ahrar center for prisoners' studies revealed a picture for a little girl being surrounded by another group of soldiers.

The website Walla said that the images were taken inside homes in Gaza and showing Palestinian prisoners being humiliated by Israeli soldiers. The photos were posted on Facebook website as souvenirs.

In one of these images two Israeli soldiers were pointing their weapons at a blindfolded detainee, while another one shows a soldier carrying his gun besides a Palestinian woman from Gaza inside a kitchen.

A third picture was taken for a soldier as he finished writing "we will come back soon" and below it he drew the star of David.

For its part, Al-Ahrar center was able to get a picture for a Palestinian girl blindfolded and handcuffed with her hand behind her back and her knees on the floor as four Israeli soldiers were pointing their guns and laughing provocatively at her.

Director of the center Fouad Al-Khafsh said that the picture proved how sadistic the Israeli soldiers are and how they find their great pleasure in the suffering of their detainees and appealed to the girl in the photo or anyone knowing her to contact the center so as to take legal action against the Israeli army.

http://jnoubiyeh.com/2010/10/new-photos-of-israeli-soldiers.html

The Zionist Murderers Of Iraq

By JONATHAN AZAZIAH

It has been 20 years since the murderous sanctions of the supranational police force known as the UN were implemented in Iraq. These sanctions claimed over 1.5 million innocent lives including more than 500,000 children by starving them to death. It has now been over 7 years, since the Zionist-instigated, Zionist-designed, Zionist media-enforced occupation of Iraq began, and as of this moment, 1.5 million more innocent Iraqis have been slaughtered. That’s 3 million human beings. Dead. In twenty years time. And these are only the casualties reported. All news files use the phrase “at least” preceding every description of how many are dead after a bombing, a shooting or a missile strike. There are martyrs whose names will never be known, whose faces will never be seen, whose stories will never be told.

In addition to the legacy of rape, murder and destruction, the terrorist armies of America, Britain and their allies have turned Iraq into a toxic wasteland by leaving behind 1,700 tons of depleted uranium (which doesn’t include what was left in the first Gulf War), 5,000 tons of other hazardous waste materials, and over 14,5000 tons of contaminated oil and soil tainted by the oil. Basra, in Southern Iraq, has been devastated by depleted uranium. Fallujah, in Western Iraq, has been torn apart by white phosphorus and mark-77, including 133 of its gorgeous mosques. The diseases contracted from exposure to these weapons of mass destruction are now more exuberant than Hiroshima and Nagasaki after Zionist Harry Truman dropped Zionist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb. Babies are stillborn. People die of cancer and other unknown infections from the WMD-affected areas daily. Mothers and fathers commit suicide due to what has been done to their children. Crops are irrevocably damaged. Water is undrinkable. Those who eat or drink have a high-risk chance of getting sick also. These horror stories are never told either. These are casualties never counted.

The utter devastation of Iraq has turned over 5 million Iraqis into refugees, internally and externally, and 5 million children into orphans. Tens of thousands of Iraqi girls and women have been victimized by Kurdish-Israeli gangsters who have criminal sex rings all across the Middle East from the Zionist entity to Turkey to Syria, after they turned to prostitution as a way to support their families (1). The child mortality rate in Iraq has skyrocketed 150% since 1990, when the deathtrap of UN Resolution 661 was integrated into world policy. Only 50% of school-age children are attending class. Despite being the ancient land of the eternal Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, 70% of Iraq’s people have no access to water. 80% have no access to sanitation. 70% of Iraqis are unemployed, and 43% live in horrendous poverty (2). 5,800 Iraqis are detained in US prisons, overt and covert, for absolutely no reason, with absolutely no evidence, and 30,000 more Iraqis are being detained by the treasonous puppet government with no charges against them in the most inhumane conditions (3). These are undisputable facts. Now the questions are: Who are the criminals behind 20 years of atrocities? And why did they perpetrate such horrible, ungodly crimes against humanity?

Attributing the desecration of Iraq to such generalities as “corporatism” or “imperialism” is baseless and unequivocally cowardly. Corporatism and imperialism are not living, breathing entities which determine the affairs of mankind. There are individuals behind every action of corporate greed and imperial interests. They have names. They have affiliations. And in the case of the illegal invasion, occupation and subsequent genocide against Iraq, every individual involved is a Zionist of Khazarian or Anglo extraction with dual loyalty to the despicable, criminal, illegitimate state of Israel.

A 1982 document entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” written by Oded Yinon, an Israeli foreign policy advisor, appeared in a World Zionist Organization journal, and it describes the Zionist plot to destabilize Iraq and separate it into three states: a Sunni State, a Shia State, and a Kurdish state, before fulfilling the delusional Talmudic prophecy of annexing those lands as a part of Greater Israel. Whenever the Zionist media mentions strife in Iraq, it always describes it as ‘sectarian,’ even if there is no evidence of sectarian strife. This propaganda has been designed by neo-conservative policy makers and commentators from pro-Israel think tanks like Kristol Jr., Kristol Sr., Krauthammer, Pipes and his racist father, Cohen, Goldhagen, Frum (Bush’s speech writer), Lewis and Rubin to portray Iraqis as savages, and as animals, who not only hate Americans but each other as well, to dehumanize them so the American masses are brainwashed to think of them as such and support the illegal war. The traitor and former CIA asset Ahmed Chalabi is at work with a company owned by Zionist criminal Zeev Belinsky to construct a wall in Baghdad to separate Sunni and Shia communities in another scheme to create Iraqi disunity (4). It has been mentioned by several US politicians including self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden, that the only solution to the ‘conflict’ in Iraq is to break it up into nation states. Sunni, Shia, Kurd, and Assyrian lived together peacefully in brotherhood before the criminal US-UK invasion. Nation states aren’t necessary. Only an end to the occupation is. That must not be forgotten.

A 1996 document entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” was written by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser and other Zionist agents for current Prime Minister of the usurping Zionist entity, mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu. This document saliently featured the removal of Saddam Hussein and the weakening of Iraq as a cornerstone for Israeli success and domination of the region. Richard Perle and Douglas Feith would later become high-ranking officials in the Pentagon for George Bush’s criminal administration, and they were instrumental in the orchestration of the unlawful occupation of Iraq.

In 1998, a bill was signed into law by the butcher of Bosnia, war criminal Bill Clinton entitled “The Iraq Liberation Act” which made ‘regime change’ in Mesopotamia an important aspect of US foreign policy, and it was this felonious legislation that was cited prior to the invasion on March 20, 2003. It was co-authored by Zionist monster Joe Lieberman and banking shill John McCain.

These three documents were what the Zionist puppetmasters of Bush and Cheney used as reasoning to destroy Iraq. Zionist Philip Zelikow, the criminal behind the ridiculous 9/11 Commission Report, admitted that Iraq had been invaded for Israel’s protection (5), as did Marine General Anthony Zinni (6), and Senator Fritz Hollings (7). Zionist Paul Wolfowitz, a chief architect of Iraq’s plight, vehemently advocated torture and executions of Iraqi prisoners, and it is due to his lunacy, that 900 Iraqis sit on death row waiting to be killed, despite being convicted of crimes with no evidence. Wolfowitz encouraged the genocidal army to set up concentration camp-type prisons to break the Iraqis’ spirit of Resistance (8). Wolfowitz was also responsible for bringing in Mossad and Shin Bet advisors to train US assassination hit squads in 2003. He has openly confessed that this was a war of aggression that he helped foment. Why has no court prosecuted this maniac? Zionist Stuart Levey was a key official in the Treasury Department that appropriated additional war funds to the US military. The Pentagon derived its false intelligence for the war from the Office of Special Plans, controlled by Zionists Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky, which was supported by liar Donald Rumsfeld, and usual suspects Elliot Abrams and Wolfowitz. Feith and Wolfowitz conducted seminars for the US military that focused on torture-interrogation, that should be used by the troops to humiliate any Iraqi that was detained (9). It was this training that led to the horrors in Abu Ghraib prison.

Douglas Feith’s former law partner, L. Marc Zell, formed an alliance with nephew of aforementioned Iraqi traitor Ahmed Chalabi, Salem Chalabi to set up the Iraqi International Law Group, which was called a ‘marketing partnership for Iraq’s reconstruction.’ What it really was, was a war profiteering agency that would rake in billions of dollars on the backs of oppressed and psychologically devastated Iraqis. The companies brought in for this war profiteering were almost exclusively Zionist. 55 Israeli companies are now working in the ruins of Iraq, under assumed names (10), including Perini, the company of Zionist Senator Diane Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, which has received over half a billion dollars in reconstruction contracts (11). Since the invasion, the Zionist entity has exported $300 million of goods annually to Iraq. It has profited from artifacts stolen from Iraq’s soil, like ancient Talmudic manuscripts extracted by the US army’s elite ‘MET Alpha’ unit in May of 2003. Dual citizens of Israel from Kurdistan, working with Mossad, are also engaged in hostile takeovers of the tombs of sacred men regarded as Prophets in the Abrahamic faiths, claiming these are ‘Jewish’ properties to be overseen by the Israeli Minister of Tourism, although every Prophet mentioned is fully accepted by Iraq’s Muslims, and Muslims worldwide. The tombs of the Prophets Jonah in Mosul, Daniel in Kirkuk, Ezekiel in Babel Province near the city of Najaf, and Ezra in Misan Province near Basra belong to Iraq (12). Any statement declaring that these sites belong to Israel is simply more Zionist madness.

Other profiteers included war criminal Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR, which had made billions in building US military bases worldwide, and former CIA agent Erik Prince’s Blackwater, now known as XE, whose homicidal campaigns of trigger happy paramilitary activity have left thousands of Iraqis dead, including the infamous massacre in Nisoor Square. It is estimated that over 100,000 military contractors on the Zionist US government’s payroll are still operating in occupied Iraq, many of them from XE, and 7,000 more have just been sent in after the withdrawal of several brigades of US military men.

The Secretary General of Hezbollah, his eminence, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, made an extremely important point that must be taken into account, during his historic speech for Al Quds Day this year, “If the level of the Israeli spying activities in Lebanon is so high, what can we say about the Israeli espionage in Iraq, amid an American occupation? All of us know that having a strong and unified Iraq is a red line for Israel. That’s why Israel believes it should work day and night to promote conflicts among Iraqis (13).” Mossad has been caught by local Iraqi police interrogating and torturing civilians detained in secret prisons. A retired Israel intelligence offier, Shmoel Avivi has been the primary weapons dealer for ‘terrorist groups’ in Iraq since 2005 (14). More than 530 Iraqi scientists have been slaughtered by Mossad hit squads since 2003, and many of their family members have gone missing (15). As of November 2009, 950 Israeli agents were stationed in Kirkuk and are rumored to have a bomb-making facility there. Just like the parasitic Israeli drones & balloons that have been flying in Lebanese airspace since Hezbollah thoroughly embarrassed the Zionist entity in 2006, several Israel Aerospace Industries reconnaissance drones have been sighted in Iraq since 2007. The killing of an Israeli soldier during a US onslaught against Fallujah that claimed hundreds of innocent lives in 2004, exposed a Zionist network of over 1,000 operatives scattered across neighboring villages (16).

False flags have become the signature of Mossad involvement in a crime; assistance comes from their allies in CIA or MI5. The case of the two British morons dressed up as members of Al-Mahdi Army planting car bombs in the fall of 2005 serves as the most prominent illustration (17). No Iraqi Resistance organization, Sunni or Shia, Muslim or Christian has ever claimed responsibility for any of the truck bombings, ‘suicide bombings,’ or IEDs that have been a part of life in Iraq since the occupation began. The reason why they have never claimed responsibility, is because they aren’t the ones responsible. No suspect has ever been caught in any truck or car bombing. No body for any suicide bomber has ever been uncovered or identified. The IEDs have been portrayed in the Zionist media as homemade explosive devices used by ‘desperate insurgents.’ A closer look at the capabilities of the IED cuts through this monumental and condescending lie; the devices are anything but innovative. These devices are designed. The explosions produced by these devices are powerful enough to flip over a 70 ton tank. Several of the IED models are equipped with depleted uranium projectiles to pierce the toughest military-grade armor (18).

The explosions that murdered 125 innocents at the Imam Ali Mosque on August 29, 2003, the series of bombings that murdered 178 people and injured 500 more on March 2, 2004 for Ashoura, and the two truck bombs that murdered 152 innocents and critically injured 347 more in Tal Afar on March 27th 2007 are menacingly revealing examples that military grade explosives were used due to depleted uranium-tipped shells being found at the scenes of the massacres (19). The only place where such sophisticated weaponry is produced, is the Zionist entity’s laboratories. The IEDs are manufactured by Rafael Advance Defense Systems, the chief weapons developer for IOF. The triggers for the IEDs are manufactured by Zionist company Zapata Engineering, which was given a $200 million contract to store US ammunition and destroy ‘enemy’ ammunition in Iraq. Zapata Engineering convoys routinely travel with US army brigades (20). It is quite interesting, that Zapata’s main office in North Carolina, is near the Fort Bragg US army base where Mossad agents trained assassination squads in 2003 (21). All evidence points to the fact that the murderers of Iraq’s people are NOT Iraqis, but efficiently trained, Zionist explosive experts. The Sayyed was right, Israel works hard day and night indeed.

A final point that needs to be addressed before concluding, is the point of the two theories that mislead those seeking the truth about Iraq, deflecting their attention from Israel to groundlessness. The first theory is a relatively old one, the second theory is a relatively new one. The first theory is the timeless “War for Oil” diatribe that was introduced by the same ‘liberal’ Zionist ideologues that backed the US invasion then miraculously turned against their initial decision. The US already dominated the oil industry. Its excellent relations due to its imposing military presence in a plethora of oil rich nations including Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are evidence of this; and this isn’t counting its own profitable oil and natural reserves on its stolen and occupied Native American land, its bases in East Asia, and its bases in several oil-rich nations on the annihilated continent of Africa. The last thing the US needed was Iraq’s oil. Also, US oil corporations were able, willing, and ready to deal with Saddam Hussein because they feared losing out to Russian, Asian and European competition once Iraq no longer accepted dollars for oil, only Euros. They had already been in deep economic engagement with oil administrators in Iraq, despite sanctions, embargoes, and congressional & presidential disapproval. War and genocide would severely damage their business relationship with Saddam, and it did once the occupation began, hence why gas prices in the US spiked throughout Bush’s reprehensible presidency.

One detail that is never mentioned by the erroneous “War for Oil” crowd for obvious tribal reasons, is that if there indeed was a war for oil, it was a war for oil to send to the Zionist entity. In 1927, the sanguinary British Empire, acting at the behest of Lord Rothschild and his immensely powerful banking clan, built a pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa to accommodate the energy needs of Zionist Jews illegally migrating into Palestine. After more than two decades of regional conflict, especially unified uprisings in Iraq against the oppressive UK-installed monarchy, the pipeline was severely damaged and it eventually decayed, although the transit route remained. Once the bloodthirsty US military was firm in Iraq’s ground, Zionist Bush reopened the idea of renovating the pipeline much to the delight of his Zionist controllers (22); mass murderer Netanyahu commented “Soon you will see Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa. It is just a matter of time until the pipeline is reconstituted, and Iraqi oil will flow to the Mediterranean. It's not a pipe dream; (23)” and in April of 2008, Haaretz reported the plan to transport Kirkuk’s oil to Haifa via Jordan, the usurping entity’s monarchical ally, for a lucrative transfer fee (24).

The second of the theories, and the more absurd of the two, is that Iran is behind much of the chaos in Iraq, using death squads to breed ethno-religious conflict and instability. It is sickening that there are actually commentators and journalists who believe this idiocy, and it makes one wonder if they are simply Zionist-trained propagandists used to infiltrate the Resistance movement. The only death squads in Iraq are the Special Forces admittedly trained by the CIA, the Pentagon, and the Zionist entity to conduct assassination, kidnaping, torture and rape to intimidate the people into submission (25). These CIA death squads are behind the near extermination of Iraq’s ancient Christian population, who were instrumental in the accomplishment of the July 14th Revolution that removed the British monarchy in Iraq, whose scientists helped make Iraq a center of academia in the Middle East, and whose benevolent leaders always had solidarity with Iraq’s predominantly Muslim population (26). It was the occupying entities of America and Israel that murdered Iraq’s Christians, NOT Iraqis. These foolish anti-Shia, anti-Persian bigots can’t show us a drop of depleted uranium from Iran, an Iranian military base, an Iranian tank, Iranian white phosphorus, Iranian mark-77, Iranian cluster bombs, an Iranian lobby instigating the violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and people, or an Iranian media brainwashing the global masses to support the genocide in Iraq because they don’t exist. Spreading disunity and hatred benefits nobody but the Zionist occupiers.

The occupation of Iraq is nowhere near over despite the Zionist-birthed, Zionist-funded, Zionist-supported stooge and liar Barack Obama’s proclamations with cover from the Zionist media. 94 military bases still remain. 40 military camps still remain. 50,000 troops and 100,000 contractors still remain. The largest US embassy in the world is an everyday reminder for the Iraqis of the repugnance, revulsion, and dehumanization they have faced for the past 7 years. The large majority of Iraqi children suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (27); the mental scars inflicted by the occupation may never heal. Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years; thousands of tons of this destructive substance have been spilled in Iraq since 1990 and the damage caused is irreversible. The tactics used by the occupation forces were designed and implemented to break the people. Iraq remembers Mahmudiyah, Haditha, Karbala, Najaf, Diyala, Anbar, Mukaradeeb, Mosul, Khanaqin, and Baghdad, Basra and Fallujah over and over again. Iraq remembers and it will never forget.

Iraq is the cradle of civilization. It is the sacred land where Prophets walked. Similar to occupied Palestine, it is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews who lived together harmoniously before the Zionist entity was created. Iraq is the land of knowledge, where its contributions to mathematics, science, poetry, language, art and culture were known and cherished worldwide. This rich history is no longer at the forefront though when one thinks of Iraq.

Now Iraq is the land of the butchered and the deformed. The land of the infected and the cancerous. The land of shattered dreams and disintegrated lives. The land of the depraved and the degraded. The land of the raped and the insulted. The land of widows. The land of orphans. The land of sorrow. The land of despair. The land of the broken. But... Iraqis are still here. Iraqis are still here, and still fighting.

The murder of Iraq was designed and executed by the agents of international Zionism, the leaders of which reside in Israel, America, and Britain. Those who subscribe to another theory are dead wrong, and the facts confirm it. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that a strong, unified Iraq was a ‘red line’ for Israel, and he couldn’t be more correct. Like in the days of revolutionary leader Abdul Karim Qasim, who overthrew the British-installed dynasty, Iraq will be strong and unified again. Iraq will mend the pieces of its broken land. It will heal the wounded, and celebrate the lives of its martyrs. Iraq will rise again. And when it does, it will once again strike fear in the hearts of its Zionist enemies.

Jonathan Azaziah is an Iraqi-Moroccan Hebrew-Russian MC, poet, activist, and writer from Brooklyn, New York currently residing in Florida. His mixtape, Take The Red Pill Volume 2: Disarm The Octopus will be available for download in Fall. He can be reached at Jonathan.Azaziah@Gmail.com.


Sources:

(1) Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has Invaded America by Robert Friedman (rip); Prostitutes conquer Kirkuk; report written with blood by Soran Mama Hama (rip)

(2) Iraq is America’s Gaza by Allen L. Roland

(3) Post-invasion Iraq - the facts by Hadani Ditmars

(4) Ghettoizing Baghdad by Felicity Arbuthnot

(5) Iraq was invaded to protect Israel - US official by Emad Mekay

(6) Ex-Mideast Envoy Zinni Charges Neocons Pushed Iraq War To Benefit Israel by Ori Nir and Ami Eden

(7) ‘Iraq Was Invaded to Secure Israel,’ says Senator Hollings by Mark Weber

(8) Wolfowitz’s Real Crimes by Abu Spinoza

(9) Doug Feith: “I Was a Major Player” In Bush’s Torture Policy by Jason Leopold

(10) 55 Zionist Companies Working In Iraq Under Assumed Names by Yaqen News Agency, translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr

(11) Senator Feinstein’s War Profiteering by Joshua Frank

(12) Israel Hopes To Colonize Parts of Iraq as ‘Greater Israel’ by Wayne Madsen

(13) Sayyed Nasrallah: Mideast Peace Talks Are “Born Dead” by Hussein Assi, Al Manar

(14) Israeli Officer Sells Weapons To Terrorists In Iraq by PressTV

(15) Mossad Murdered 530 Iraqi Scientists. Plight of Iraqi Academics by Special Report, Al Jazeera and Dr. Ismail Jalili

(16) Israel’s Battle In Fallujah by Rashid Khashana, Al Hayat

(17) British “Undercover Soldiers” Caught Driving Booby Trapped Car by Michel Chossudovsky

(18) Israeli made IEDs and US Zapata Engineering made IED triggers are killing US, Canadian and NATO soldiers by NB Gazette

(19) Iraq IEDs: Mossad/Zapata Engineering Conspiracy? By Cloak and Dagger

(20) Marines Jail Contractors in Iraq by David Phinney

(21) Israel Trains US Assassination Squads In Iraq by Julian Borger

(22) Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil by Ed Vuillamy

(23) Netanyahu Says Iraq-Israel Oil Line No Pipe-Dream by Steven Scheer

(24) U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan by Amiram Cohen

(25) CIA death squads operating in Iraq by Henry Michaels

(26) US War Against Iraq: Destruction Of A Civilization by James Petras

(27) Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War by Cesar Chelala

http://www.jnoubiyeh.com/2010/09/zionist-murderers-of-iraq.html

F**K You Anyway

The bravest, most eloquent 9 year-old kid in the world (English subtitles)

Israeli Minister "We always use the anti-Semitism trick or bring up the Holocaust"

Army vandalism in Hebron: soldiers destroy family’s well in Wad Lerus

3 August 2010 | ISM Media

Yesterday morning (2 August 2010) a group of Israeli soldiers, reportedly drunk, used two bulldozers to destroy a well that belonged to a family living in Wad Lerus, Hebron.

Several ISM activists went out to talk to members of the Al Jaabel family in Wad Lerus, close to the Kyriat Arba settlement in Hebron, yesterday afternoon.

The family members we talked to were very upset since Hebron already has limited water supply, and they depend on this private well in front of their house as a water source, as do some of their neighbours. They had also invested a lot of resources, both on building the well and filling it with water.

They explained that a group of approximately 50 soldiers and border police arrived at the family home at 11:00 in the morning on Monday. The soldiers were reported to be drunk, drinking cans of beer while carrying out the destruction work. ISM activists observed empty beer cans scattered around the destroyed well.

The family said that soldiers and border police brought two bulldozers, and that these were used to destroy the walls at the side of the well, causing huge rocks to fall down into it. When the family tried to stop the soldiers, they were met with violence and aggression, including towards the women. The soldiers also destroyed the gate to the house, which was now standing at the side, off the hinge. The attack lasted for about 30 minutes, and severe damage was done to the well during this time. Several water pipes were also cut off.

At the time ISM visited the family, they were about to empty the well since they fear that children might fall into it. There used to be an edge preventing this possibility, which was bulldozed down by the soldiers. The family told us that they had just bought and refilled the well with 80 cubic meters of water, to the cost of 2000 shekels, and now they had to see it all going to waste. The incident was the first time they had experienced a military attack of this nature, and even though they fear it will happen again, they have no other choice but to try and rebuild the well.

Updated on August 3, 2010

http://palsolidarity.org/2010/08/13525/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29

Palestinian Boy Begs Israeli Soldiers Not To Take His Father

Revered Rabbi Preaches Slaughter of Gentile Babies - Settlers Step up "Price-tag" Policy

By Jonathan Cook, DissidentVoice / August 2nd, 2010

A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.

So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.

It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.

Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.

Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s spiritual leaders, defended the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.

But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira’s influence on the settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar’s seminary, which was built without a permit.

Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar’s 500 inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.

He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of torching a mosque in the neighbouring village of Yasuf last December.

“Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It doesn’t want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world,” Etkes said.

He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a “Greater Israel”. Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as its ideology has flourished in the settlements.

“It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks. In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child’s play compared with today’s settlers.”

In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms “gentiles” and “non-Jews” in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.

They write that Jews have the right to kill Gentiles in any situation in which “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives” even if the Gentile is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created”.

The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy.

The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.

The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.

Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to “show no mercy” were distributed by the army’s rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat units.

An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, found Shapira’s seminary had received government funds worth at least $300,000 in recent years. American and British groups have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.

According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Yitzhar settlers have responded to the demolition order against their seminary by threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.

The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the time, termed the settlers’ actions a “pogrom”.

The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.

In April, Yitzhar’s settlers marched through the village of Huwara and pelted a Palestinian family’s home with stones in “reprisal” for the arrest of 11 of their number.

A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly after stones were thrown at the settler’s car. The teenager was shot in the back.

Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and burning fields.

In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson attack on the mosque.

Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira, was questioned by police last Thursday over his endorsement of the book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who opened fire in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.

In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a “clarification statement”.

A group calling itself “Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg” recently distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to “spare your lives and the lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us”.

What is Kach?

Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in 1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews and Gentiles.

The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the group is considered a terrorist organisation in the United States and most of Europe, its ideology has been allowed to thrive in the settlements.

Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious law identical to or worse than Kahane’s.

Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-member parliament.

Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament’s third largest party and is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His own party’s anti-Arab “No loyalty, no citizenship” programme includes echoes of Kahane’s ideology.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

http://www.jnoubiyeh.com/2010/08/revered-rabbi-preaches-slaughter-of.html

Oliver Stone apologized for Telling the Truth

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 9:58AM Gilad Atzmon

There you go, Oliver Stone apologized for suggesting that the Jewish lobby controls Washington's foreign policy and that Hitler's actions should be put into context.

In fact, Stone’s apology confirms Stone’s argument. We are subject to constant assault by Jewish and Israeli gatekeepers who insist on controlling the political and historical discourse and defy any possible criticism of Jewish national affairs.

“In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret,” Stone said in a statement released late Monday, the day after his remarks were published in a British newspaper.

JTA reported today that Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, was among the Jewish organizations and Israeli officials to condemn the remarks.

Steinberg in a statement said Stone's apology "was necessary and we accept it. But whether he acted out of sincerity or as a desperate response to the moral outcry at his comments is an open question," he added. "He must be judged by his future words and deeds.”

Steinberg demands “sincerity” and future subservience. I would actually expect him to join Stone and be slightly more enthusiastic about historical research and contextual thinking.

Israel's propaganda minister’, Yuli Edelstein, was also among those who had condemned Stone's remarks early Monday. "They are nauseating, anti-Semitic and racist, Not only is he showing ignorance, he is demonizing Jews for no reason and returning to the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'

Interesting indeed. Stone doesn’t refer to race. There is nothing anti Semitic in his remark whatsoever unless telling the truth is a form of anti Semitism. Moreover, Stone didn’t demonize Jews for being Jews, he described some actions committed by Jewish institutional lobbies, actions that are now academically documented and studied. He did it for a good reason. Stone is probably patriotic or pragmatic enough to gather that peace is important.

"When a man of Stone's stature speaks in this way”, said Edelstein, “it can bring waves of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, and may even damage Jewish communities and individuals." Edelstein is almost correct. Stone was brave enough to tell the truth about Jewish power, he probably wasn’t courageous enough to stand for it, which is understandable. However, Edelstein and other Jewish leaders better realise that Stone is far from being mad, anti Semitic or racist. Stone told the truth as we all see it.

Instead of silencing criticism, Edelstein, Steinberg and others better look in the mirror because the time is running out for Israel and its supporters

Update: Haim Saban to CBS: Cancel Oliver Stone's Showtime Series

http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/exclusive-haim-saban-stone-should-join-mel-gibson-retirement-19614

The New Yorker reported last month that at a conference last fall, Saban described his pro-Israeli formula, outlining “three ways to be influential in American politics…make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” ...

Coming Soon- David Cameron apologizes for telling the truth about Gaza being a prison Camp.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-oliver-stone-apologized-for-telling-the-truth.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook





Two dead and four children injured in Israeli nail bomb attack in Beit Hanoun, Gaza

International Solidarity Movement

Sammah Eid El-Massry, 9, in a 'semi-critical' condition in hospital/ ISM, July 22, 2010 "She came in through and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited. All of the family saw this – her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house." This is a mother describing to us her daughter, 9-year-old Sammah as she came in to her home at 4pm after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza. She is now in a semi-critical condition in hospital, suffering extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and 'flechettes’ from a nail bomb that landed 100m away, causing internal bleeding to the chest, severe head trauma and nails embedded in her body. Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely populated civilian areas and SamahEid El-Massry is one of four children injured in the attack yesterday, July 21st. Two young men were killed: Mohammad Al-Kafarneh, 23, from severe shrapnel injuries in his back and chest and Kasim Al-Shinbary, 19, caused by injuries from nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel wounds to the back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians – the Israeli Occupation Force called them 'militants’ – just as they called the four children, aged between 4 and 11, who were left hospitalised by their injuries 'militants’. Their parents could be found weeping over their loved ones in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last night. We first visited Haitham Thaer Qasem a four year old boy and a first and only child. He was sleeping on the hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the strapping around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the nail bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, where they had pierced his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200m from the impact of the bomb. In his hospital ward his mother was standing to one side crying quietly and another relative at Haitham’s bedside explained what had happened. "We had asked Haitham to get shopping for her from the market…then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital." Four-year-old Haitham Thaer Qasem, injured by an Israeli nail bomb In a nearby ward we then visited 9-year-old Sammah Eid El-Massry who was in a worse state. The doctor told us she was in a 'semi-critical’ condition with severe chest, head and abdominal pain. Her blood-loss was a major concern, arriving at the hospital with 7.5 haemoglobin levels, 4-6 below the normal levels, the problem exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffered from a blood condition known as Thalassemia for which the drug Exjade is in extremely short supply due to the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest. "She was in a very bad condition when she arrived – it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube. Very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain", the doctor tells us. This is not the first time the family was attacked, Sammah’s 4-year-old brother Ryad Eid El-Massry was injured during Operation Cast Lead, the three week Israeli assault over the New Year of 2009 period, during which over 400 Palestinian children were killed. "Our house was hit during the war, a neighbour sheltering inside was killed and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t able to access the care he needed and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged." As we left Sammah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital following the attack: Azzam Mohammed El-Massry (aged 11) has a severely fractured left elbow and Ebrahim Wasseem El-Massry (aged 4) has light injuries to his abdomen. It’s not just the siege. Criminal Israeli violence continues unabated, resulting in Palestinians in Gaza – children like Sammah, Haitham, Azzam and Ebrahim – and their families experiencing horrific pain and suffering. Last week it was the Abu Said family, attacked in their home on the border East of Gaza city; they lost Nema, a 33-year-old mother of five as she went outside to look frantically for her youngest son. Three more family members were also injured, again by the thousands of 'flechette’ darts unleashed by the nail bomb assault. Many of these darts will remain permanently embedded in their bodies. Palestinians remain incredulous to the idea of justice. They will remain so as long as they’re allowed to be dismissed as footnotes by those supporting, or blindly ignoring, what has happened to them and is being done to them. But those who meet them like we did yesterday will never forget what they go through. And people of conscience around the world are beginning to open their eyes instead of turning their backs and acting against these ongoing atrocities.

:: Article nr. 68173 sent on 22-jul-2010 23:31 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=68173

Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?

By Jeff Blankfort, DissidentVoice / July 23rd, 2010

When Noam Chomsky was stopped at Jordan’s Allenby Bridge and prevented from entering the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli occupation forces in May, the widespread condemnation of that action extended even into the mainstream media which in the past has paid little attention to his comings and goings and even less to what he has had to say. Chomsky, who has visited Israel on a number of occasions and lived on a kibbutz in the 1950s, had been invited to give a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah and had also arranged to meet with Salam Fayyad, the unelected prime minister of the Palestine Authority and a favorite of both Washington and Israel and, it would appear, of Chomsky. The negative publicity arising from the incident caused the Israeli government to reverse its position, blaming its refusal to admit Chomsky on an administrative error. Chomsky was not mollified and decided to forego the trip to the West Bank and present his talk to the Bir Zeit students by video from Amman. When interviewed by phone the following day from New York by Democracy Now! on which he is a familiar presence, Chomsky noted that “I was going to meet with the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. But his office called me here in Amman this morning, and we had a long discussion. He is pursuing policies, which, in my view, are quite sensible, policies of essentially developing facts on the ground. It’s almost – I think it’s probably a conscious imitation of the early Zionist policies, establishing facts on the ground and hoping that the political forms that follow will be determined by them. And the policies sound to me like sensible and sound ones.” Unfortunately, Chomsky was not questioned about his support for the nation building priorities of the earlier Zionists nor if he considered the Palestine Authority’s endorsement of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, of its attempts to suppress a UN investigation of the Goldstone Report, and of the role played by its US-trained militia in protecting Israel, to be also “sensible and sound.” Missing from the discussion about what was made to appear a blunder on Israel’s part was a much more important issue: Why had Chomsky been invited to speak at Bir Zeit in the first place? For those puzzled by that question, be assured that it is meant to be taken quite seriously.

Once upon a time Prof. Chomsky was considered by many to be the most important spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. It was a position he attained largely on the basis of his writings and activism in opposing the Vietnam War and US intervention in Central America in which, unlike the case with Israel, he had no personal vested interest. That Chomsky has maintained that position despite the presence in the US of a number of distinguished Palestinian professors, among them the late Edward Said, who were and are more knowledgeable about the subject and could speak from personal experience that does not include prior service as “a Zionist youth leader” – Chomsky’s background – is a reflection of the political culture of the American Left which was and remains substantially if not predominantly Jewish, particularly in its leadership positions. Support for Israel had become so ingrained and fear of anti-Semitism so deeply embedded in the psyche of American Jewish Leftists in the aftermath of World War 2, that if the Jewish state was to be criticized it had to be by someone from within the tribe who unequivocally supported its existence. Unfortunately, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the building of a viable Palestinian solidarity movement within the United States, that mindset persists to this day and largely explains why Chomsky maintains his reputation despite public utterances over the past half dozen years that have done more to undermine the Palestinian cause than to help it.

I examined Chomsky’s history in some detail in an article that I wrote for Left Curve in 2005 that called attention to the destructive role he has played regarding the Palestinian-based boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel and the equally destructive impact of his dismissal of the pro-Israel lobby as an influential force in shaping US Middle East policy. That he is still at it, and that his influence among what are considered “progressives” has lessened only imperceptibly, requires another look at the professor’s fierce and unyielding opposition to the BDS campaign launched by the leading organizations of Palestinian civil society. This movement has been gaining support in the world that exists outside of the United States, particularly among trade unions, a fact that is causing considerable concern within Israel and among its lobbyists/agents around the world who claim it is a campaign to “delegitimize” the Jewish state.

Within the United States, however, this campaign challenging Israel has frequently and in certain instances, intentionally, been confused with a vastly different, US-centered, campaign that avoids penalizing Israel while targeting US companies that provide goods and services that assist Israel in maintaining the occupation. This latter campaign Chomsky does support as does the leading Jewish peace group, Jewish Voice for Peace which has recently been conducting a drive to get 10,000 signatures for its campaign to pressure Caterpillar to stop selling bulldozers to the Israel military which it has used to destroy Palestinian homes. While this is a worthy endeavor, does anyone seriously think that a refusal by Caterpillar to halt its sales to Israel would change the current situation for the Palestinians in any significant way? Or are we seeing something else here on the part of both Prof. Chomsky and JVP with their competing campaign, namely, damage control on Israel’s behalf?

One might certainly draw that conclusion from comments Chomsky has made over the past several years and most recently in interviews with Israeli television (clip1) and with Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, the newly appointed president of the Council for National Interest (CNI), on Jerusalem Calling, the CNI’s online radio program. In the interview with Alison Weir, Chomsky not only repeatedly attacks advocates of an Israeli boycott as being hypocritical, he accuses them of doing damage to the Palestinian cause. “What I have opposed,” says Chomsky, “is BDS proposals that harm Palestinians. If we are serious about BDS or any other tactic, we want to ask what the consequences are for the victims. We have to distinguish always in tactical judgments between what you might call ‘feel good’ tactics and ‘do good’ tactics. There are tactics that may make people feel good in doing something, but maybe they harm the victims.” Pushed on the subject by Weir, he repeats that a boycott of Israel is “harmful to Palestinians and the reason is harmful is very obvious.” And what is obvious about it, Chomsky tells us in the very next sentence. “It is so hypocritical that it discredits the whole effort. I mean,” he says, “why boycott Israel and not boycott the United States? The US has a much worse record.”

When reminded by Weir that “Palestinian civil society issued a call, signed by dozens of diverse organizations calling for a boycott of Israel,” Chomsky was dismissive and condescending. “There are groups who call themselves Palestinian civil society who are calling for a boycott,” he responds, “and I think they are making a mistake and I’ve explained why. I’m not going to take, adopt positions which have already been and will continue to be quite harmful to Palestinians.” “If you want to, then do it,” Chomsky adds, upbraiding Weir and by implication, the Palestinian people themselves, “but it’s clear why the call for a boycott [of Israel] has been harmful for Palestinians and will continue to be.” “The reason,” he repeated, “is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record, in fact, it’s even responsible for most of Israel’s crimes. (My emphasis) “So therefore, if your position,” and from his tone of voice he is clearly jabbing a verbal finger at Weir, “is that hypocritical, how can we even take you seriously? That’s like giving a gift to the hard-line elements.

One might be forgiven for thinking that when Chomsky says “we” and refers to “hard-line elements” he is speaking of himself. He seems to confirm that later when, continuing his attack, he tells Weir:

I find your commitment to harming Palestinians surprising. It is quite obvious why a call for a boycott of Israel is a gift to AIPAC. It’s a gift because they can point out that it is utterly hypocritical” and again, like a well rehearsed mantra he repeats, “We are not boycotting the United States, for example, which has a much worse record and is responsible for a lot of Israel’s criminal behavior.

“I can give you cases if you want [but he doesn't offer any] where the calls like the one you’re advocating have, in fact, for good reasons, harmed Palestinians,” and he repeats once again that Weir’s “support for the efforts which are basically gifts to the hardliners…”

Let’s stop a moment before going on and ask ourselves some questions about what Chomsky has been saying. One, shifting blame for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians to the US (the Nakba?, the 1967 capture of the West Bank and Gaza?) he argues that rather than calling for a boycott of Israel, Palestinians should be calling for a boycott of the United States. Apart from the failure patently inherent in such a campaign, what does Prof. Chomsky believe would be the response of the majority of Americans to a call by Palestinians for such a boycott? Or, for that matter, a call by supporters of the Palestinians in the United States for a boycott of their own country? Beneficial for the Palestinians, Professor Chomsky, or harmful? Or just plain stupid? Since the answer to that question is obvious, genuine supporters of the Palestinian struggle who still see Chomsky as an ally need to ask themselves why he would call for a campaign that would bring further disaster down upon the heads of the Palestinians.

Now think about his main argument that boycotting Israel as opposed to the United States is hypocritical; that the “hardliners,” in which he specifically includes AIPAC – which otherwise he dismisses – will use this against the Palestinians by pointing out that the US has committed far greater crimes than Israel. While there are some Jewish American settlers who have taken this position, referring to the Vietnam and Iraq wars, does Chomsky seriously believe that AIPAC or any major American Jewish organization would make this argument and compare America’s crimes to Israel’s? Again, the answer is obvious. But why does Chomsky insult our intelligence by asking us to believe such a fatuous claim? Why do those who know better let him get away with it? The answer to the first question was given by Prof. Chomsky to the interviewer from Israel’ Channel Two television station who paid him a visit in Amman on May 19, two days after he was turned back at the Allenby Bridge.

When challenged about statements he had made strongly criticizing Israel, Chomsky responded, “I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.” Chomsky, who, in certain circles likes to boast of his early Zionist activities did so for both his Israeli interviewer and for Alison Weir. Noting that he had opposed the notion of a Jewish state in favor of a bi-national state, “once Israel was formed in 1948, my position has consistently been that Israel should have all the rights of every state in the international system, no more and no less. ” He would repeat exactly the same words when speaking with Weir six weeks later. Chomsky volunteered to his Israeli interviewer that up to five or six years ago, he had considered living there as an alternative to the United States and in the 1950s, “we had considered staying there, in fact.” In other words, he seems to have no problem with the Jewish “right of return” to what, until 1948, was Palestine, but considers a similar demand by the Palestinians who were actually born there to be not only unrealistic but potentially dangerous.

Although presented with an opportunity in both interviews to do so, Chomsky made no mention of the plight of the 750,000 Palestinians made refugees in the period of Israel’s founding nor of the more than 400 Palestinian villages that Israel purposely destroyed to wipe out their traces. In fact, that history and the situation of the now millions of Palestinian refugees today, is something he rarely, if ever mentions, unless asked about it. On one such occasion, when he was asked if the refugees would be obligated to give up their “right of return” under a “two-state solution,” Chomsky’s preferred outcome, he replied: “Palestinian refugees should certainly not be willing to renounce the right of return, but in this world – not some imaginary world we can discuss in seminars – that right will not be exercised, in more than a limited way, within Israel. Again, there is no detectable international support for it, and under the (virtually unimaginable) circumstances that such support would develop, Israel would very likely resort to its ultimate weapon, defying even the boss-man, to prevent it. In that case there would be nothing to discuss. The facts are ugly, but facts do not go out of existence for that reason. In my opinion, it is improper to dangle hopes that will not be realized before the eyes of people suffering in misery and oppression. (Emphasis added) Rather, constructive efforts should be pursued to mitigate their suffering and deal with their problems in the real world.” (Znet, 30 March 2004)

What Chomsky is saying to the refugees is that if they persist with their demand to return to Palestine, and should that demand, support for which is currently undetectable in Chomsky’s eyes, actually grow to the point where Israel feels threatened with an avalanche of returnees, it is likely to use its nuclear weapons and blow up the planet. So, for the sake of the “real world” that has ignored them and to keep Israel, a country that he unhesitatingly supports, from exercising the “Sampson Option,” the refugees should forget about going home and await some nebulous “constructive efforts… to mitigate their suffering.” I can imagine what most Palestinians would say to that but it is unprintable. When Weir asked if he had been aware of the Nakba in the days when he had been a Zionist youth leader, Chomsky acknowledged that he had been “well aware of that,” but rather than offer any opinion on it, he referred to his membership in Hashomir Hatzair which had supported a bi-national state and that he lived on a kibbutz which, prior to 1948, called for “Arab-Jewish cooperation in a socialist state.” He did not come to live on that kibbutz, however, until 1953, five years after the Nakba.

In speaking with Weir, Chomsky did not hesitate to defend Israel’s legitimacy.. “Within Israel,” he said, “within the so-called Green Line, the internationally recognized borders, it’s a democratic state in the sense of Western democracies. There are laws and more than laws, practices that assign second class citizenship to Palestinians. In that respect it is not different from the US and other Western democracies.” While there are few who will deny that racism exists in every Western (and non-Western) society and that it has often taken violent forms, Chomsky’s attempt to rationalize Israel’s ongoing discrimination of those Palestinians who remained after the Nakba, by lumping it together with the forms of racism practiced in the US and elsewhere, is too riddled with holes to analyze here but raises additional questions about on which side of the barricades he stands. The fact that he says “the occupation is simply criminal” as if Israel is not should not deceive us.

It should also be pointed out that Chomsky’s accusing Weir of harming the Palestinian cause is in keeping with the modus operandi he has employedwhen challenged from the Left regarding his stands on the Israel-Palestinian issue. With Alison Weir, it was the boycott of Israel, with Noah Cohen, in 2004, it was the latter’s advocacy of a single state and the Palestinian right of return. Chomsky accused Cohen of “serving the cause of the extreme hawks in Israel and the US, and bringing even more harm to the suffering Palestinians.”(Znet, 26 July 2004)

I have also been not immune from such an attack. On November 12, 2004, before writing my article for Left Curve and after I had written the professor, asking him a number of questions that I hoped would clarify his positions he responded in a letter thusly:

“I have never really understood why you consistently take positions that so severely undermine any hope of justice for the Palestinians, find truth so offensive, and work so hard to evade our own responsibilities in favor of the much more convenient stance of blaming others [Israel]. But that’s your business. I don’t write or speak about it.”

What we are dealing with in the case of Prof. Chomsky is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty parading as its opposite and the boycott issue has brought it to the fore.

A glaring but little known example of that came in a speech that Chomsky made to the Harvard Anthropology Dept. in 2003 shortly after the MIT and Harvard faculties issued a joint statement on divestment. It was gleefully reported in the Harvard Crimson by pro-Israel activist, David Weinfeld, under the headline “Chomsky’s Gift”:

MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky recently gave the greatest Hanukkah gift of all to opponents of the divestment campaign against Israel. By signing the Harvard-MIT divestment petition several months ago – and then denouncing divestment on Nov. 25 at Harvard – Chomsky has completely undercut the petition.

At his recent talk for the Harvard anthropology department, Chomsky stated: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.”

He argued that a call for divestment is “a very welcome gift to the most extreme supporters of US-Israeli violence… It removes from the agenda the primary issues and it allows them to turn the discussion to irrelevant issues, which are here irrelevant, anti-Semitism and academic freedom and so on and so forth.” [Harvard Crimson, 2 December 2003] (Emphasis added.)

The following year, Chomsky clearly stunned Christopher J. Lee, an interviewer for the Safundi: the Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies [10 May 2004] when in an exchange comparing Israel with the former apartheid regime, he again came to Israel’s defense and cast opposition to sanctions on Israel as a moral issue. “One of the important tactics against the apartheid government was the eventual use of sanctions. Do you see that as a possibility?” asked Lee. “No,” Chomsky replied. “In fact I’ve been strongly against it in the case of Israel. For a number of reasons. For one thing, even in the case of South Africa, I think sanctions are a very questionable tactic. In the case of South Africa, I think they were [ultimately] legitimate because it was clear that the large majority of the population of South Africa was in favor of it. “Sanctions hurt the population. You don’t impose them unless the population is asking for them. That’s the moral issue. So, the first point in the case of Israelis that: Is the population asking for it? Well, obviously not. “So calling for sanctions here, when the majority of the population doesn’t understand what you are doing, is tactically absurd-even if it were morally correct, which I don’t think it is. The country against which the sanctions are being imposed is not calling for it.” To which the bewildered Safundi understandably asked, “Palestinians aren’t calling for sanctions?” “Well,” Chomsky responded, as if he had been asked a stupid question, “the sanctions wouldn’t be imposed against the Palestinians, they would be imposed against Israel.” “Furthermore,” added, “there is no need for it. We ought to call for sanctions against the United States! If the U.S. were to stop its massive support for this, it’s over. So, you don’t have to have sanctions on Israel.”

It would seem from that exchange that Chomsky has more respect for the opinions of Israel’s Jews than those of his fellow Americans. In applying double standards to Israel and the United States, Chomsky has been consistent. After telling the Israeli interviewer that, speaking as an American citizen, “we are responsible for our own actions and their consequences,” in the very next breath he declares that “every crime that Israel commits is with US participation and authorization,” which, even if true, which it is not, presumably would make Israel culpable, but not apparently enough, in Chomsky’s eyes, to warrant a boycott.

At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine. That same background may also explain his resistance to acknowledging the very obvious power of the pro-Israel lobby over US Middle East policy which he, like many others who share a similar history, interpret as “blaming the Jews,” a most taboo subject. It is, without a doubt, far more comfortable for him and his followers to continue insisting that US support for Israel is based on it being a “strategic asset” for the United States even when an increasing number of mainstream observers who are not linked to AIPAC or the Zionist establishment have judged it to be a liability. Should not Chomsky himself, on the basis of his own statements, be judged as to whether he is an asset or a liability for the Palestinian cause? If they have not already done so, serious supporters of that cause, including Palestinians, need to ask themselves that question.

First published at Pulse.

Jeffrey Blankfort is former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin, long-time photographer, and has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He also hosts a program on international affairs for KZYX, the public radio station of Mendocino County, California. He can be reached at: jblankfort@earthlink.net. Read other articles by Jeff.

http://www.jnoubiyeh.com/2010/07/chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or.html

Targeted Citizen - English

Targeted Citizen - English from Adalah on Vimeo.

The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film's theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat.

http://vimeo.com/10302596

West Bank poverty 'worse than Gaza'

Children living in the poorest parts of the West Bank face significantly worse conditions than their counterparts in Gaza, a study conducted by an international youth charity has found.

The report by Save the Children UK, due to be released on Wednesday, says that families forced from their homes in the West Bank are suffering the effects of grinding poverty, often lacking food, medicine and humanitarian assistance.

The European Commission funded study found that in "Area C"- the 60 per cent of the West Bank under direct Israeli control - the poorest sections of society are suffering disproportionately because basic infrastructure is not being repaired due to Israel's refusal to approve the work.

Homes, schools, drainage systems and roads are in urgent need of repair, but instead of work being allowed, families are being forced to live in tents and do not have access to clean water.

Restrictions on the use of land for agriculture have left thousands of Palestinian children without enough food and many are becoming ill as a result, the study found.

Crisis point

Conditions in Area C have reached "crisis point", the charity said, with 79 per cent of the communities surveyed lacking sufficient food - a greater proportion than in blockaded Gaza, where the figure is 61 per cent.

in depth

Video: Israel expands settlements Israelis protest freeze Map of East Jerusalem housing plan Focus: Comments: US-Israel relations Jerusalem's religious heart Strain on US-Israel ties Q&A: Jewish settlements Riz Khan: Middle East peace process Battle over settlements Inside Story: US and Israel poles apart Programmes: Israel: Rise of the right Holy Land Grab

The lack of proper nutrition is having a major impact on the health of children growing up in the area, with 44 per cent of those surveyed for the study suffering from diarrhoea, the world's biggest killer of children under the age of five.

Many children living in such communities are showing signs of stunted growth, with the figure running at more than double Gaza's rate, and more than one in ten children surveyed for the study were found to be underweight.

The report says that for many Palestinians, international humanitarian assistance is far harder to access in the West Bank than in Gaza, with almost half the households surveyed in Area C reporting that they had no access to foreign aid assistance.

Save the Children warned that with the blockade of Gaza dominating headlines in recent months, the international community risked forgetting the fate of the poorest communities in the West Bank.

"The international community has rightly focused its attention on the suffering of families in Gaza but the plight of children in Area C must not be overlooked," Salam Kanaan, Save the Children's director in the occupied Palestinian Territories, said.

"Palestinians in the West Bank are widely thought to enjoy a higher standard of living but tragically many families, particularly in Bedouin and herder communities, actually suffer significantly higher levels of malnutrition and poverty."

The organisation called for Israel to immediately cease home demolitions and land confiscations in the West Bank and said the Palestinian authority should take "urgent action" to develop services and improve food security in Area C.

"Palestinian children cannot wait for the stalled peace talks between the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and the United States to find solutions to this crisis," Kanaan said.

Pockets of poverty

Cairo Arafat helped devise the Palestinian Authority's action plan for children before starting part-time work with Save the Children, and is now a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority. She told Al Jazeera the figures in the report did not reflect the conditions in the West Bank as a whole, but were still a major cause for concern.

"The overall conditions, if you look at health indicators and education indicators, are better than what is normal for the reigion," she said.

"The problem is we are beginning to see a regression."

The West Bank had "pockets of poverty," she said, that left around around 10 per cent of the 240,000 children in the territory at risk of ill-health.

"There are certain parts of the West Bank were the situation is much worse than in Gaza, with a lack of access to water and shelter," she said.

Arafat said that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was attempting to tackle the issue in the face of "excessive" obstruction from the Israeli authorities, particularly in areas near settlements and close to the separation barrier built by the Israeli military.

"The PNA is investing in a number of different programs in Area C and near where the wall is being built to improve the situation," she said.

"But there are certain areas where the Israelis won't allow infrastructure to be built."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201062916845576597.html

John Mearsheimer: Sinking Ship

By John J. Mearsheimer, The American Conservative – 1 August 2010 issue
http://amconmag.com/article/2010/aug/01/00010/

The attack on the Gaza relief flotilla jeopardizes Israel itself

Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state.

The bungled assault on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla, shows once again that Israel is addicted to using military force yet unable to do so effectively. One would think that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would improve over time from all the practice. Instead, it has become the gang that cannot shoot straight.

The IDF last scored a clear-cut victory in the Six Day War in 1967; the record since then is a litany of unsuccessful campaigns. The War of Attrition (1969-70) was at best a draw, and Israel fell victim to one of the great surprise attacks in military history in the October War of 1973. In 1982, the IDF invaded Lebanon and ended up in a protracted and bloody fight with Hezbollah. Eighteen years later, Israel conceded defeat and pulled out of the Lebanese quagmire. Israel tried to quell the First Intifada by force in the late 1980s, with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin telling his troops to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators. But that strategy failed and Israel was forced to join the Oslo Peace Process instead, which was another failed endeavor.

The IDF has not become more competent in recent years. By almost all accounts—including the Israeli government’s own commission of inquiry—it performed abysmally in the 2006 Lebanon war. The IDF then launched a new campaign against the people of Gaza in December 2008, in part to “restore Israel’s deterrence” but also to weaken or topple Hamas. Although the mighty IDF was free to pummel Gaza at will, Hamas survived and Israel was widely condemned for the destruction and killing it wrought on Gaza’s civilian population. Indeed, the Goldstone Report, written under UN auspices, accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Earlier this year, the Mossad murdered a Hamas leader in Dubai, but the assassins were seen on multiple security cameras and were found to have used forged passports from Australia and a handful of European countries. The result was an embarrassing diplomatic row, with Australia, Ireland, and Britain each expelling an Israeli diplomat.

Given this history, it is not surprising that the IDF mishandled the operation against the Gaza flotilla, despite having weeks to plan it. The assault forces that landed on the Mavi Marmara were unprepared for serious resistance and responded by shooting nine activists, some at point-blank range. None of the activists had their own guns. The bloody operation was condemned around the world—except in the United States, of course. Even within Israel, the IDF was roundly criticized for this latest failure.

These ill-conceived operations have harmful consequences for Israel. Failures leave adversaries intact and make Israeli leaders worry that their deterrent reputation is being undermined. To rectify that, the IDF is turned loose again, but the result is usually another misadventure, which gives Israel new incentives to do it again, and so on. This spiral logic, coupled with Israel’s intoxication with military force, helps explain why the Israeli press routinely carries articles predicting where Israel’s next war will be.

Israel’s recent debacles have also damaged its international reputation. Respondents to a 2010 worldwide opinion poll done for the BBC said that Israel, Iran, and Pakistan had the most negative influence in the world; even North Korea ranked better. More worrying for Israel is that its once close strategic relationship with Turkey has been badly damaged by the 2008-09 Gaza war and especially by the assault on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship filled with Turkish nationals. But surely the most troubling development for Israel is the growing chorus of voices in the United States who say that Israel’s behavior is threatening American interests around the world, to include endangering its soldiers. If that sentiment grows, it could seriously harm Israel’s relationship with the United States.

Life as an Apartheid State

The flotilla tragedy highlights another way in which Israel is in deep trouble. Israel’s response makes it obvious that its leaders are not interested in allowing the Palestinians to have a viable state in Gaza and the West Bank, but instead are bent on creating a “Greater Israel” in which the Palestinians are confined to a handful of impoverished enclaves.

Israel insists that its blockade is solely intended to keep weapons out of Gaza. Hardly anyone would criticize Israel if this were true, but it is not. The real aim of the blockade is to punish the people of Gaza for supporting Hamas and resisting Israel’s efforts to maintain Gaza as a giant open-air prison. Of course, there was much evidence that this was the case before the debacle on the Mavi Marmara. When the blockade began in 2006, Dov Weisglass, a close aide to Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, said, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” And the Gaza onslaught 18 months ago was designed to punish the Gazans, not enforce a weapons embargo. The ships in the flotilla were transporting humanitarian aid, not weapons for Hamas, and Israel’s willingness to use deadly force to prevent a humanitarian aid convoy from reaching Gaza makes it abundantly clear that Israel wants to humiliate and subdue the Palestinians, not live side-by-side with them in separate states.

Collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza is unlikely to end anytime soon. Israel’s leaders have shown little interest in lifting the blockade or negotiating sincerely. The sad truth is that Israel has been brutalizing the Palestinians for so long that it is almost impossible to break the habit. It is hardly surprising that Jimmy Carter said last year, “the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than human beings.” They are, and they will be for the foreseeable future.

Consequently, there is not going to be a two-state solution. Instead, Gaza and the West Bank will become part of a Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Israelis and their American supporters invariably bristle at this comparison, but that is their future if they create a Greater Israel while denying full political rights to an Arab population that will soon outnumber the Jewish population in the entirety of the land. In fact, two former Israeli prime ministers—Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak—have made this very point. Olmert went so far as to argue, “as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

He’s right, because Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. Like racist South Africa, it will eventually evolve into a democratic bi-national state whose politics will be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians. But that process will take many years, and during that time, Israel will continue to oppress the Palestinians. Its actions will be seen and condemned by growing numbers of people and more and more governments around the world. Israel is unwittingly destroying its own future as a Jewish state, and doing so with tacit U.S. support.

America’s Albatross

The combination of Israel’s strategic incompetence and its gradual transformation into an apartheid state creates significant problems for the United States. There is growing recognition in both countries that their interests are diverging; indeed this perspective is even garnering attention inside the American Jewish community. Jewish Week, for example, recently published an article entitled “The Gaza Blockade: What Do You Do When U.S. and Israeli Interests Aren’t in Synch?” Leaders in both countries are now saying that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is undermining U.S. security. Vice President Biden and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, both made this point recently, and the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, told the Knesset in June, “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.”

It is easy to see why. Because the United States gives Israel so much support and U.S. politicians routinely laud the “special relationship” in the most lavish terms, people around the globe naturally associate the United States with Israel’s actions. Unfortunately, this makes huge numbers of people in the Arab and Islamic world furious with the United States for supporting Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians. That anger in turn helps fuel terrorism against America. Remember that the 9/11 Commission Report, which describes Khalid Sheik Muhammad as the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks,” concludes that his “animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” Osama bin Laden’s hostility toward the United States was fuelled in part by this same concern.

Popular anger toward the United States also threatens the rulers of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, key U.S. allies who are frequently seen as America’s lackeys. The collapse of any of these regimes would be a big blow to the U.S. position in the region; however, Washington’s unyielding support for Israel makes these governments weaker, not stronger. More importantly, the rupture in Israel’s relationship with Turkey will surely damage America’s otherwise close relationship with Turkey, a NATO member and a key U.S. ally in Europe and the Middle East.

Finally, there is the danger that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, which could have terrible consequences for the United States. The last thing America needs is another war with an Islamic country, especially one that could easily interfere in its ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is why the Pentagon opposes striking Iran, whether with Israeli or U.S. forces. But Netanyahu might do it anyway if he thinks it would be good for Israel, even if it were bad for the United States.

Dark Days Ahead for the Lobby

Israel’s troubled trajectory is also causing major headaches for its American supporters. First, there is the matter of choosing between Israel and the United States. This is sometimes referred to as the issue of dual loyalty, but that term is a misnomer. Americans are allowed to have dual citizenship—and in effect, dual loyalty—and this is no problem as long as the interests of the other country are in synch with America’s interests. For decades, Israel’s supporters have striven to shape public discourse in the United States so that most Americans believe the two countries’ interests are identical. That situation is changing, however. Not only is there now open talk about clashing interests, but knowledgeable people are openly asking whether Israel’s actions are detrimental to U.S. security.

The lobby has been scrambling to discredit this new discourse, either by reasserting the standard argument that Israel’s interests are synonymous with America’s or by claiming that Israel—to quote a recent statement by Mortimer Zuckerman, a key figure in the lobby—“has been an ally that has paid dividends exceeding its costs.” A more sophisticated approach, which is reflected in an AIPAC-sponsored letter that 337 congresspersons sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March, acknowledges that there will be differences between the two countries, but argues that “such differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence.” In other words, keep the differences behind closed doors and away from the American public. It is too late, however, to quell the public debate about whether Israel’s actions are damaging U.S. interests. In fact, it is likely to grow louder and more contentious with time.

This changing discourse creates a daunting problem for Israel’s supporters, because they will have to side either with Israel or the United States when the two countries’ interests clash. Thus far, most of the key individuals and institutions in the lobby have sided with Israel when there was a dispute. For example, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have had two big public fights over settlements. Both times the lobby sided with Netanyahu and helped him thwart Obama. It seems clear that individuals like Abraham Foxman, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, and organizations like AIPAC are primarily concerned about Israel’s interests, not America’s.

This situation is very dangerous for the lobby. The real problem is not dual loyalty but choosing between the two loyalties and ultimately putting the interests of Israel ahead of those of America. The lobby’s unstinting commitment to defending Israel, which sometimes means shortchanging U.S. interests, is likely to become more apparent to more Americans in the future, and that could lead to a wicked backlash against Israel’s supporters as well as Israel.

The lobby faces yet another challenge: defending an apartheid state in the liberal West is not going to be easy. Once it is widely recognized that the two-state solution is dead and Israel has become like white-ruled South Africa—and that day is not far off—support for Israel inside the American Jewish community is likely to diminish significantly. The main reason is that apartheid is a despicable political system that is fundamentally at odds with basic American values as well as core Jewish values. For sure there will be some Jews who will defend Israel no matter what kind of political system it has. But their numbers will shrink over time, in large part because survey data shows that younger American Jews feel less attachment to Israel than their elders, which makes them less inclined to defend Israel blindly.

The bottom line is that Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state over the long term because it will not be able to depend on the American Jewish community to defend such a reprehensible political order.

Assisted Suicide

Israel is facing a bleak future, yet there is no reason to think that it will change course anytime soon. The political center of gravity in Israel has shifted sharply to the right and there is no sizable pro-peace political party or movement. Moreover, it remains firmly committed to the belief that what cannot be solved by force can be solved with greater force, and many Israelis view the Palestinians with contempt if not hatred. Neither the Palestinians nor any of Israel’s immediate neighbors are powerful enough to deter it, and the lobby will remain influential enough over the next decade to protect Israel from meaningful U.S. pressure.

Remarkably, the lobby is helping Israel commit national suicide while also doing serious damage to American security interests. Voices challenging this tragic situation have grown slightly more numerous in recent years, but the majority of political commentators and virtually all U.S. politicians seem blissfully ignorant of where this is headed, or unwilling to risk their careers by speaking out.

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-07-01/john-mearsheimer-sinking-ship/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraeliOccupationArchive+%28Israeli+Occupation+Archive%29