You know you're Zionist when...

You can choose to adopt a different identity and later hijack it for your nationalist motives

Everybody wanted to historically kick you out of their empire for obvious reasons!

You can seek refuge in someone else homeland and then later call it yours!

You can accuse people fighting for their homeland as terrorists!

You can display your ultra-nationalism even though you're bunch of immigrants!

You pretend to be follower of Judaism yet you base your state on secular values!

Anyone who justifiably criticizes you is Antisemitic!

You can still collect considerable sympathy over holocaust even though you follow similar Nazi attitude towards Palestinians!

You can afford to have nuclear weapons while a Muslim country possessing it is a threat for humanity!

Superpowers use their veto every time to save your ass!

You're less than 0.3% of the world but you steal many of the world's capital through investment banking institutions!

You're brave enough to raid a humanitarian flotilla!

You can still prosper consistently while the rest of the world goes bankrupt!

Even though deep down you know the truth, you will still deny most of the above-mentioned facts!

Source

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

As Israeli airstikes continue to be carried out in Gaza, most people there feel trapped and abandoned by the world.

By Yasmeen El Khoudary

August 22, 2011 "Al-Jazeera" - - The mini war that Israel waged on Gaza following the turmoil in South Israel is just another perfect example of how Gaza is the Middle East's "Biggest Loser." Caught in a thorny network composed of selfish interests and different agendas, the 1.5 million people of Gaza are indeed the biggest losers when it comes to just about anything in the Middle East.
 
Our destiny does not lie within our hands. We do not have any control over even the smallest aspects of our lives. We do not enjoy the luxury of planning for tomorrow, let alone next week. We, the people of Gaza, valiantly try to go on with our daily lives as if things are in perfect order. But there are times when things are so bleak and so dark that everything we have been trying to build collapses in the blink of an eye.

On Thursday, and after a rough night full of Israeli air attacks on different locations in the Gaza Strip, we woke up to another hot Ramadan day which was interrupted by news about a shooting operation in Eilat, whereby five Israeli soldiers were killed and 36 others were injured. Immediately and without even waiting for the details of the operation to be announced, people started fretting about a likely Israeli attack on Gaza.

It was much like the instantaneous reactions of Muslims in Norway to the terrorist attacks that took Oslo by storm recently, which ignited fear in their hearts because of inevitable racist attacks that they were going to suffer had the attacker been a Muslim. More inevitable than the racist attacks was of course the media threat, which also instantaneously and without any evidence linked the terrorist attacks to Al Qaeda and to Muslim extremists. However, the murderer turned out to be a Norwegian, allowing Norwegian Muslims to heave a sigh of relief.

'We are never safe'

The scenario in Gaza was not very different. The 'operation' killed five soldiers, but nobody knows who led the operation. At first, we read reports indicating that Egypt's involvement, only to find that Israel promptly denied Egypt's intervention before Egypt itself did. Immediately afterwards, we heard Ehud Barak's statements accusing 'Gaza' of the attacks and promising to "punish those who were responsible". How he came to that conclusion, what evidence he holds, or who in Gaza he thinks is responsible, we have no idea (and neither does he, I'm starting to believe). What we know for sure is that we are doomed, and that ahead of us lies what might be a live reminder of Cast Lead, regardless of the fact that not a piece of evidence connected the people of Gaza to the Eilat operation.

That is the only difference between the case with Norwegian Muslims and us. The former were safe after the truth was revealed, but we are never safe - with or without the truth. Between Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the USA, and whoever happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, we, the innocent people of Gaza, can be found struggling to catch our breath from under the feet of these selfish giants whenever something happens. Today is no exception- and as usual, there's no one that can be blamed cost-free but the people of Gaza. Even if Egypt was involved in this operation, it seemed that Israel was emphasizing 'Gaza's' sole responsibility for the operation because it felt like avenging and retaliating. I would not be surprised if the communication blackout that was imposed on Gaza ten days ago was the first of many to come, and that we might be experiencing one in case a military operation is indeed launched. 

Amidst the wild rumors, leaks and speculations, the constant Israeli threats, the rising toll of people killed and injured by Israel, Friday prayers around the Strip calmed people down. In times like these, mosques play a very important role, by reading soothing prayers, make urgent announcements, etc. Last Friday, however, and as Israel was bombing Gaza, the Imam leading the prayers in the mosque next to our house was concerned with something else. He dedicated his sermon and his prayers to Somalia and asked people to donate to it. That humanity, that beating human conscience and respect for human life are the qualities that are inseparable from Palestinians, even if the world might think otherwise.

Whether what awaits us is another cruel Israeli attack where we would be both the aggressor and the victim, or whether it's going to be a deceiving live political soap opera where we sit back and watch, we do not know. We will wait for it to happen, because the selfish world decides our fate. It is because we, the people of Gaza, are guilty until proven innocent - if ever.

Yasmeen El Khoudary is a freelance writer based in Gaza, occupied Palestine. She graduated from the American University in Cairo with a BA in Political Science, and works now as a self-employed writer and researcher. She blogs at yelkhoudary.blogspot.com

Follow Yasmeen El Khoudary on Twitter:- @yelkhoudary

U.S. blocks emergency meeting on Gaza violence: Palestinian official

RAMALLAH, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United States has blocked a Palestinian demand for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the Israeli military escalation on Gaza, Palestinian official said on Sunday.

"The United States has managed to obstruct holding a meeting of the UNSC. We could not even get a UNSC presidential statement to condemn the Israeli crimes in Gaza,'' the Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour told the Voice of Palestine Radio.

Mansour added that Washington has stressed any UNSC president statement should only condemn the Eilat attacks, in which eight Israelis were killed on Thursday.

On Saturday, an aid to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the president will ask for an emergency meeting of the UNSC to discuss the Israeli deadly airstrikes on the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli attacks have caused the death of at least 14 Palestinians since Thursday.

The airstrikes came hours after Israel accused Palestinian militants of carrying out a well-planned operation in the Red Sea city of Eilat, north of Israel, were eight Israelis were killed.

Special Report: Palestine-Israel Conflicts

Dangerous Voyage To Site of Israeli Attack on USS Liberty

By Ann Wright

A Texas man making a dangerous voyage to the site of 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. At the site, he will be holding a memorial service honoring those killed on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military.



Larry Toenjes, 74, from Clear Lake Shores, Texas, is sailing his 39-foot sailboat, the s/v Liberty, to the coordinates of the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 sailors and wounded another 173. 207 were killed or wounded out of the 294 on board the USS Liberty in the 90-minute attack by strafing attack planes and torpedoes. At the site, Toenjes will be holding a memorial service honoring those killed on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military.

Toenjes is a five-year Coast Guard veteran with a PhD in economics. He worked for years in the Bureau of Budget in the state government of Illinois and, upon moving to Texas in 1983, taught at the University of Texas in Austin and was a research professor at the University of Texas.

Toenjes and Joe and Sherrie Wagner, his two-person crew also from Texas, set sail from Texas in July. They have sailed over 7,000 miles and are currently in Malta. According to Joe Meadors, the President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Toenjes has Egyptian government permission to travel in Egyptian territorial waters to the site of the attack.

 A Call for Congress to Listen to the Survivors of the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty

 Toenjes said: “I do not intend to go near Gaza. All I intend to do is exercise my right as an American citizen to proceed to a point in international waters where a grave injustice was perpetrated against US sailors and express my dismay that that injustice is being extended by the failure of Congress to have the ‘courage’ to listen to what these men have to say. Members of Congress never seem to miss an opportunity to say to a service man or woman, ‘We thank you for your service!’ It seems, however, that their service is not to be acknowledged if it would have the effect of embarrassing the State of Israel and the pro-Israel Lobby here in the US.”

Meadors said Toenjes told him he is considering mooring at the coordinates of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty for a few weeks. Toenjes will be staying well clear of the coordinates of the Israeli blockade of Gaza as published in the Israeli Notices to Mariners, but Meadors said contact with the Naval Attaché’s office in the US Embassy, Tel Aviv had not produced written assurances from the Israeli government that Toenjes will not be harassed or attacked by the Israeli military, even though Toenjes will be in Egyptian waters.

US Embassy Refuses to Send a Delegation to the Ceremony

 Meadors has been assisting Toenjes in getting the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to be concerned about the safety of Toenjes.  He said the US Embassy in Tel Aviv has been invited to attend the ceremony but that representatives have refused to send an official delegation to rendezvous with the s/v Liberty and attend the memorial service because “they cannot find a single vessel in all of Israel that is capable of making the trip.”

 Meadors added, “You know as well as we do that the last thing the US government wants to do is to send an official to attend a memorial service honoring the 34 of our shipmates who were killed in action during the attack on the USS Liberty (because of the U.S. Government cover-up of the Israeli attack). We want the Naval Attaché to convey to American Embassy officials in Israel that their refusal to attend the memorial service for Americans who were killed on the USS Liberty is unacceptable and not in keeping with the way America treats its honored dead.”

 Meadors said that he also has invited the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to send an official representative to attend the memorial service.

Letter of Concern for Toenjes’ Safety from President of the USS Liberty Veterans

On August 10, 2011, Meadors wrote an extensive letter to Assistant Naval Attaché Lieutenant Commander Jason K. Edgington at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel giving details of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty 44 years ago and his concern for the safety of Larry Toenjes. 



Given our history with the US Navy, the US government and the Israeli government I’m sure you will understand when I tell you that your reassurances do nothing to quell our concerns for Larry’s safety and the sanctity of the memorial service for our fallen shipmates.

If you will recall your US Navy history you will remember that our skipper, Capt. McGonagle, recognized the potential danger involved in working at the station to which we were sailing. He asked the Sixth Fleet for a destroyer escort but that request was denied because we were “a clearly identified US Navy ship.”

 Further, the Israeli government did not issue any NOTMARS to inform ships sailing in the area of any danger.

 When we were attacked, two flights of Sixth Fleet aircraft that had been launched to come to our assistance were both recalled while we were still under attack and calling for help which allowed the Israelis to continue their attack for over an hour more unhampered by the threat of Sixth Fleet intervention. To this day the US government has refused to conduct an investigation of the attack on our ship despite accounts of USS Liberty survivors telling them that we were attacked by unmarked aircraft, that our radios were jammed on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, that our life rafts were deliberately machine gunned in the water and that the torpedo boats slowly circled our burning and torpedoed ship while firing from close range at Liberty crewmen who ventured topside to help our wounded shipmates. More information about the attack on our ship is available at usslibertyveterans.org files/Docs.pdf.   I would like to specifically direct you to the War Crimes Report we filed with the Department of Defense (DOD). To date,   they refuse to investigate the allegations contained in that report and they refuse to send a spokesperson to USS Liberty reunions to explain their actions vis-à-vis our War Crimes Report.

 

 Move to May, 2010 and the Freedom Flotilla. 

The Israelis issued no NOTMARS closing any areas near where the Freedom Flotilla was sailing. Regardless, the Israelis intercepted the Freedom Flotilla some 60 miles from shore, attacked the Flotilla and killed 9 passengers — one an American citizen. This elicited not a single word of concern from the US government despite the fact that one of the vessels was of American registry.

 Just this year the Israelis intercepted, boarded and impounded the French ship Dignite as it participated in Freedom Flotilla 2. That was done in international waters well clear of the coordinates provided by the Israelis for their blockade of Gaza and very near to the coordinates of the attack on the USS Liberty. They did this without issuing any NOTMARS closing the area.

 That said, I am sure you will understand that your reassurances to the contrary we do not have any confidence whatsoever that Larry will be allowed to proceed to the coordinates and conduct the memorial service absent any harassment from the Israeli government. Despite his being well outside the area defined by the Israeli government as the boundaries of their blockade of Gaza and despite the s/v Liberty being a US flagged and registered vessel he will be harassed by the Israeli Navy to the extent that his vessel will be boarded and impounded by the Israeli Navy and the US government will do absolutely nothing either to prevent it or to assist Larry in getting the Liberty released from Israeli custody.

In closing, let me respectfully submit that the reason I believe the US government will not provide an official to represent them during the memorial service is not because they cannot find a single vessel in all of Israel capable of making the trip as they claim but because they know the s/v Liberty will be intercepted, boarded and impounded by the Israeli Navy (even in Egyptian waters).

Warmest regards,
Joe
Joseph L. Meadors
USS Liberty Survivor
President
USS Liberty Veterans Association


 Call US Embassies and State Department

Meadors asked that concerned citizens call the US Embassies in Tel Aviv (Israel.usembassy.gov/consular/acs/emergency) and Cairo (Egypt.usembassy.gov/consular/emergency) and the State Department in Washington, DC (travel.state.gov/travel/tips/emergencies/emergencies)with their demand that the United States protect US citizens sailing in international waters.

 Israeli Military Attacks on Vessels in International Waters

 The Israeli military’s history of attacking ships in international waters extends from 1967 to the present. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, a vessel carrying a Nobel Peace Laureate and a US Congresswoman was rammed and seriously damaged. Six ships in the 2010 Gaza flotilla were attacked with eight Turkish citizens and one American citizen executed by Israeli commandos and over 50 wounded.  A seventh ship in June, 2010 was attacked, as well as another boat in September, 2010. In April, 2011, a cargo ship came under a barrage of bullets from the IDF, but, with the help of the Egyptian navy returned into Egyptian waters. In June, 2011, one ship out of 10 in the Gaza flotilla escaped the Israeli diplomatic offensive that resulted in a Greek government ban on ships sailing from Greece to Gaza. It was forcefully boarded by the IDF and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Toenjes and Meadors will update us as the s/v Liberty sails for the site of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

Source : warisacrime.org

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” (www.voicesofconscience.com). She has written frequently on rape in the military.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=Dangerous-Voyage-To-Site-o-by-Ann-Wright-110816-39.html&c=a

American tax dollars at work, raping children, abusing women.

The IDF (most moral army)
regularly rapes and abuses Palestinian children in order to extract information from them.

There is nothing to say except the American Taxpayers funds this abuse and pays for it with our billions sent to Israel every year. Did we not learn from what we did to the Native American Indian? These people they are beating up are indigenous peoples not some illegal immigrants that came from lands in Europe or elsewhere. Geez us!

*
It’s truly an embarrassment at best and, at worst, it speaks to our deepest complicity in the horrible Trail of Tears that continues at this moment while our main stream media keeps feeding US citizens the line sent to it by the those in the corridors of power.
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• How do we get on the wrong side of morality?


• What can we do to stop our hard earned dollars from being used to pay for oppression and abuse?


• Are we hopelessly condemned to pay and watch our moral compass be washed away without a word?

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Shame!

 

 

Congress’ Dirty [Seven] Dozen on Aipac All-Expense-Paid Israel Junket

Democratic Congressional porkers at Aipac's trough
meeting war criminal Peres. The look of treason.

Pork may be treif, but not when it’s dished out by the pro-Israel lobby.
81 members of Congress are now in Israel on an all-expense paid junket sponsored by Aipac’s nominally non-profit American-Israel Education Foundation. The value of the trip for the member and spouse is $8,000, meaning Aipac is forking over nearly $700,000 to fund this massive hasbara undertaking.

In the interest of transparency and knowing where our tax dollars are spent, I thought it would be important to list every name of every junketeer so their constituents can know that their member is on the pro-Israel gravy train.  Here are the 33 I’ve discovered so far (please add more in the thread below):

Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Mazie Hirono D- 2 HI
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jackson Jr. D-2 IL
Patrick Meehan D-7 PA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Hank Johnson D-4 GA

A terrific website, Legistorm, tracks such junkets and offers a listing of all Congress members and staffers who’ve gone to AIEF’s trough for Israel trips.  It also lays out the specific costs of each trip.  AIEF’s $26 million annual budget gives you a good idea how much is spent each year on this lobbying boondoggle.

What I find ironic is that Congress has just spent weeks dodging one of the worst economic bullets to hit the U.S. since the 2008 financial meltdown.  And it did a piss poor job of dealing with it.  So now that they failed so miserably at doing their jobs here in Washington, they’re going to reward themselves with some much-needed sun, fun and hasbara on Tel Aviv beaches and in Israeli government conference rooms.  In their briefings, which are ostensibly “fair and balanced,” here’s who they won’t be meeting:  leaders of the J14 protest movement which is sweeping the Israeli street; Hamas, which represents approximately one-half of the Palestinian electorate; or Israeli Palestinian community leaders (or MKs).

Astonishing, that these wise and learned solons are traveling all the way to Israel to learn about the nation’s needs and how they can help keep Israel strong.  Yet they won’t have a single meeting with J14 activists.  Not to mention that the $8,000 spent on their behalf should be an embarrassment both to their constituents and those Israelis who are so desperate to maintain their middle-class status in the face of Israel’s continuing budgetary squeeze, that they’ve turned to the tent protest movement to express their increasing desperation.  But guess who isn’t likely to hear much of anything about all this?  Steny and Eric and all his good buddies.

Finally, there is the ethical and legal dimension of the junket that is deeply disturbing.  Congress members are not allowed to take such trips if sponsored by groups which employ registered lobbyists, which Aipac does.  So to get around the law, Aipac established AIEF as a 501c3 which has no lobbyists on its payroll.  In fact, AIEF has NO employees on its payroll according to its IRS 990 report.  Aipac “lends” AIEF its staff to organize these grand tours of the Israeli heartland.  Because members may accept trips from non-profits, they can do a legal end around ethics laws by lining up at the AIEF trough for a generous feeding.

So what does $700,000 buy for a lobbying group these days?  It buys tons of meaningless ‘sense of Congress’ resolutions that buttress every wild-eyed pet project and policy Aipac is peddling.  These resolutions prove nothing to anyone except that they give Aipac’s donors a sense of their own power in wielding clubs over their captive Congressional audience.  I suppose for the group these junkets are an insurance policy in case Bibi and his far right government ever really need Congress’ help in swatting away a real threat to Likud hegemony–like a UN vote for Palestinian statehood or a concerted international BDS campaign which gained traction and posed a significant financial threat to Israel.  Then Aipac could pull out all the stops to obstruct Obama (if he ever dared to do such a thing) from crossing Israel in a truly serious way.

If there was ever a thing that the Israeli-Arab conflict does NOT need it’s 80 members of Congress braying their ignorance and eternal fealty to Aipac at every turn whether during a junket or back in the halls of Congress.  Instead, they’d be far better off staying home and studying ways to raise revenue and reduce a bloated military budget in order to rein in the nation’s deficit.

Robbing Peter to Pay Israel

By Josh Ruebner

August 12, 2011 "FPIF" --  Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs.
 
During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits. 

In total, 81 representatives, nearly one-fifth of the entire House, will participate in these jaunts, which, according to The Washington Post, include “a round-trip flight in business class for lawmakers and their spouses (that alone is worth about $8,000), fine hotels and meals, side trips, and transportation and guides.”

Of course, these congressional delegations are not all fun and games. Members of Congress will be expected to sing for their lavish dinners by honoring President Bush’s 2007 pledge to provide the Israeli military with $30 billion of tax-payer-funded weapons between 2009 and 2018. So far, proposed increases in military aid to Israel have been spared from the budgetary chopping block by President Obama and a compliant Congress that treats Israeli militarism as more sacrosanct than medical care for seniors. This despite the fact that Israel misuses the funds, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians living under its illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

According to aidtoisrael.org, constituents in Illinois’ 2nd congressional district will be asked to cough up an astonishing $53 million in federal taxes as their pound of flesh for the Israeli military during this 10-year period. With this same amount of money, each year the federal government instead could give 650 low-income families housing vouchers, or retrain nearly 900 unemployed workers for green jobs, or fund early reading programs for nearly 1,600 at-risk children, or provide primary health care to more than 43,000 uninsured people in Rep. Jackson’s congressional district.

Yali Amit, an Israeli-American constituent of Rep. Jackson, Jr. called his office to oppose his participation in the trip to Israel. He was told that Rep. Jackson, Jr. wants to learn what is happening there because of his position on the appropriations subcommittee that approves military aid to Israel. Amit retorted that “you can't learn what goes on there on a paid trip of a propaganda arm of the Israeli government.”  And you certainly can’t learn about the devastating impact that these U.S. weapons have on unarmed Palestinian civilians, nearly 3,000 of whom were killed by the Israeli military over the last decade.   

The House Committee on Ethics should open an investigation to determine if it is even legal for Members of Congress to be participating in junkets organized by AIEF.  The guidelines of the committee are as bright and clear as the midday sun on a Tel Aviv beach in August. “The travel provisions of the gift rule severely limit the ability of Members and staff to accept travel from an entity that employs or retains a registered lobbyist or a registered agent of a foreign principal.” (Emphasis in original.)

Legistorm, which tracks congressional travel, explains that “even though AIPAC's primary purpose is lobbying, its nonprofit arm [AIEF] appears to provide a loophole for sponsored travel.” However, this eureka loophole that AIPAC uses does not withstand scrutiny. According to the latest publicly available tax return of AIEF, the organization has no paid employees -- an astounding feat in itself for an organization that raked in more than $26 million in 2009 and a mind-blowing accomplishment for an organization running three huge congressional delegations in one month.

An examination of AIPAC’s latest publicly available tax return reveals the sleight of hand.  AIPAC reports that in 2009, it very generously contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF.  In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft the new post-Abramoff federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees that something is rotten in state of AIPAC. According to Holman, “The House ethics rules do not provide an exemption for 501(c)(3)s that are controlled and directed by a lobbying entity to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. When the ethics rules were written in 2007 as part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), an exemption for 501(c)(3)s was written into the Senate rules – which I called the ‘AIPAC’ loophole – but the House under Speaker Pelosi stuck to strict travel rules for its members and declined to poke a comparable loophole into its ethics rules.

“Even if there were such a loophole in House rules,” Holman continues, “which there isn’t, it appears that the 501(c)(3) wing of AIPAC is little more than a front group designed to extend its lobbying activities beyond Capitol Hill. From 2000 to 2006, lobbyist Richard Kessler similarly attempted to evade the ethics rule prohibiting lobbyist- sponsored travel junkets by setting up a 501(c)(3) that he directly controlled to pay for the trips. HLOGA was passed in 2007 to end these types of evasions.”

Constituents should be irate that members of Congress accept fancy trips from AIPAC-affiliates and contributions from AIPAC-inspired political action committee (PACs) that result in the United States prioritizing weapons to Israel above our basic economic rights.  And the Committee on Ethics must investigate AIPAC’s skirting of travel regulations and shut down these trips that it has until now allowed.

Josh Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition of 375 organizations working to change U.S. policy to Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. He is a former analyst of Middle East affairs at Congressional Research Service.

Israeli textbooks portray Palestinians as ‘terrorists, refugees, and primitive farmers’

by Omar Barghouti on August 8, 2011
 

This insightful research by respected Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan will confirm what Palestinian researchers have always known: Israel’s prevailing culture of racism, fundamentalism, support for war crimes, and apartheid against Palestinians is mainly a product of an educational system that indoctrinates Jewish-Israeli students with militant colonial values and extreme racism that turn them into “monsters” once in uniform.

Guardian: Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias  “Nurit Peled-Elhanan of Hebrew University says textbooks depict Palestinians as ‘terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers“

“Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.

“People don’t really know what their children are reading in textbooks,” she said. “One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behavior of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians.”

In “hundreds and hundreds” of books, she claims she did not find one photograph that depicted an Arab as a “normal person”. The most important finding in the books she studied – all authorised by the ministry of education – concerned the historical narrative of events in 1948, the year in which Israel fought a war to establish itself as an independent state, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the ensuing conflict.

The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims.”

Those who see this as an aberration of Zionism seem to lack sufficient understanding of what Zionism really is and the central role it plays as a patently racist ideology in justifying ethnic cleansing and racist domination over Palestinians.

One should not wonder then why, at the height of the Israeli massacre in Gaza  2008-09, a Tel Aviv University poll (reported in the Jerusalem Post,  Jan. ’09) of Jewish-Israeli opinion showed a shocking 94% support for the assault, despite full knowledge of the enormous suffering this Israeli aggression had inflicted upon the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the Gaza “prison camp” and of the massive destruction of their civilian infrastructure.

As in every other colonial system, only sustained and effective pressure from within as well as from without can put an end to this downward spiral of criminality, impunity and unspoken racism. More BDS is needed to end Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid. Other than the obvious benefits to indigenous Palestinians, suffering more than six decades of this three-tiered system of Israeli oppression, an end to this system of oppression may well transform most Israelis from colonial “monsters” into normal humans.

It’s Still Occupied Territory

By Philip Giraldi

August 09, "AmConservative" -- That twenty per cent of the House of Representatives will be spending its recess holiday on American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) paid tours of Israel does not seem to have made the mainstream news. The tours, one consisting of 26 Democratic congressmen headed by House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and two others of 55 Republicans, one led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are ostensibly intended to provide congress with a “deeper understanding” of the situation in the Middle East. Sure it will, but one suspects the understanding will be in one direction only.

Cantor is trying hard to replace John Boehner as Speaker of the House by moving to the right on both the economy and on foreign policy, where his views are strictly Israel-first wrapped in the usual neocon packaging incorporating assertive projection of US national power. In November 2010, he met privately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledged that the Republican Party would serve as a “check” against any unwelcome initiatives by President Obama. At the time Cantor was not yet Majority Leader of the House but his offer to support a foreign leader against the president of his own country went unchallenged and did not in any way impede his march onward and upward. Cantor is now also setting himself up as a darling of the tea partiers in the wake of the recent government debt ceiling debacle.

Meanwhile back on Capitol Hill, other friends of Israel were busy prior to recess, also without any mainstream media coverage. Two congresswomen from Florida, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have introduced legislation that will allow Holocaust survivors living in the United States to receive federal funds to help them stay in their homes, rather than having to move to an institution. The bipartisan bill places survivors on a special list of elderly citizens receiving preferred treatment through a grant program to help them with their transportation and other needs.

“As a nation that upholds the values of freedom, liberty and justice, we have a moral obligation to acknowledge the plight and uphold the dignity of Holocaust survivors to ensure their well-being,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We must do all we can to honor their struggles and their lives by improving their access to transportation to get them where they need to go, and improve their home-care options so that they can have peace of mind. This bill does just that, and it’s time to make it happen.”

Americans who really like Israel and everything that pertains to it are certainly free to express their views, but there is something unseemly and even grotesque about the continuous promotion of foreign and ethnic group interests ahead of those of the United States and other American citizens. AIPAC is a lobby dedicated to maintaining uncritical US government support for a foreign country and it can be argued that Washington entered into at least one foreign war because of it. The congressmen who accept the junkets should be asking themselves whose interests they are really serving. At a time when both Democrats and Republicans are openly discussing cutting medical benefits for ordinary Americans, it is also difficult to understand what twisted thinking supports allocating additional taxpayer provided special medical benefits to some medicare recipients based on events that took place thousands of miles away from the US more than sixty-six years ago.

Curb Your Racism

By Eleanor Kilroy
 

I've watched every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I could get hold of, and the clip from this Season 8 episode has left me grim-faced and angry. 

August 09, 2011 -- Larry David and Jeff enthusiastically check-out a (fictional) L.A. Palestinian restaurant, 'Al-Abbas', famed for its chicken, and whilst praising the cuisine they set about insulting the people. 
 Scanning a poster with the words, Freedom for Palestine,  Jeff concludes "yeah, they do not like the Jews", and as the men perv over a glamorous woman assumed to be Palestinian, Jeff remarks that "if by some chance she's going to get over her anti-Semitism" she won't sleep with Larry anyway. Larry's retort is that desiring someone "who doesn't even acknowledge your right to exist, wants your destruction" is a turn-on.

Hilarious. Offensive. Laughable.

Larry David's right to exist in his homeland, America, seems 'pretty, pretty' secure. Slandering all Palestinians as anti-Semitic on an irreverent and popular TV show like this is a new low, and is an example of cultural and ethnic arrogance; it is no joke to imply that the Palestinian people's ongoing struggle for justice poses an existential threat to privileged, Jewish men. Antony Loewenstein's comment on the clip: "Is it possible for even liberal Jews on mainstream American TV to not frame Arabs and Palestinians as all anti-Semites? Apparently not". Meanwhile, Haaretz is grinning like a fool at Larry's joke that this is best place for Jews to cheat on their wives – since they would never be seen. If you side with the oppressor, you won't be seen dead in the company of the oppressed. 

This item was first posted at http://mondoweiss.net

81 Congress Members To Visit Israel

By Herb Keinon

August 09, 2011 "JPost" -- -Eighty-one congressmen, or about 20 percent of the US House of Representatives, will visit Israel over the next three weeks during Congress’s summer recess, with the first group of 26 Democrats scheduled to arrive on Monday.

The Democratic delegation will be followed by two Republican ones, bringing a total of 55 Republicans.

Most of the representatives are freshmen congressmen, with 47 – or fully half of the freshmen Republicans voted into office in 2010 – making the trip.

For many of them, this will be their first trip to Israel.

The week-long trips are sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable organization affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which brings large delegations of congressmen here every other August.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) will head the Democratic delegation, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor(R-Virginia) will lead one of the Republican groups.

Hoyer, in a statement, said he looked forward to “returning to Israel to continue learning firsthand about the evolving security situation in the Middle East, the deep challenges facing Israel, and the role the US can play in the region during this time of uncertainty.

I’m pleased members of Congress have this opportunity to study American interests in the Middle East and gain a deeper understanding of the issues involved in increasing stability in the region.”

The delegation will visit both Israel and the West Bank, and is scheduled to meet with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Among those on the delegation arriving Monday are Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., Ohio’s Betty Sutton, and Pennsylvania’s Mark Critz.

In a related development, The Israel Project will be bringing a group of 18 Washington-based ambassadors from Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America to Israel on Monday for a weeklong tour and high-level meetings. Like the congressmen, they will also go to Ramallah, for a meeting with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Among the countries represented on the trip are Albania, Barbados, Belize, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Macedonia, St. Lucia and Uganda.

Some of these countries have been mentioned by officials in Jerusalem as likely candidates to either vote against, or at least abstain, when the vote on Palestinian statehood comes before the UN in September.

Israeli courts discriminate against Arab Israelis in conviction and sentences

The study found that while the average prison sentence
for Jews was nine and a half months, Arabs convicted
of the same crimes were given 14 months on average.

An Israeli academic study has revealed that Israeli judges are harsher with 1948-Palestinians (Arab Israelis) – during the conviction stages and when sentenced after conviction - in comparison to Jewish Israelis.

The statistical study that was commissioned by Israel's Courts Administration and the Israel Bar Association and conducted by three Jewish Israeli researchers, found that Arab Israelis charged with the same crimes as their Jewish Israeli counterparts are more likely to be convicted, and once convicted they are more likely to be sent to prison, for longer sentences.

The study involved 1,500 criminal cases handled in six magistrate courts and three district courts between 1996 and 2005 and proved that while 63.5 per cent of Arab Israelis convicted of violent crimes were sentenced to prison, only 43.7 per cent of Jewish Israelis convicted for the same crimes were.

The study also pointed to the discrepancies regarding probation sentences - 71.2 per cent for Jewish Israelis and 78.7 per cent for Arabs.

Regarding the length of prison sentences given to Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis, the study found that while the average prison sentence for Jews was nine and a half months, Arabs convicted of the same crimes were given 14 months on average.

The study was conducted by Jewish Israeli professors Giora Rahav, Ephraim Yaar and Yoram Rabin. They accused the Israeli criminal justice system of dealing more harshly with Arab Israeli defendants than Jewish Israelis.

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2688-report-israeli-courts-discriminate-against-arab-israelis-in-conviction-and-sentences

Army Carries Out Three Air Strikes In Gaza

Friday August 05, 2011 by Saed Bannoura

 

The Israeli Air Force carried out, on Friday at dawn, three air strikes targeting Dir Al Balah in Central Gaza and Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip; damage was reported, no injuries.

Palestinian sources in Gaza told the United Press International that Israeli F-16 Fighter Jets fired two missiles at a chicken Farm in Dir Al Balah, and a training center believed to be used by fighters of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, west of the city, the Arabs48 news website reported.

Furthermore, the Air Force carried out a third air strike targeting a container west of Asda’ Media City, west of Khan Younis; damage was reported.

Media spokesperson of the Emergency Department at the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Adham Abu Salmiyya, reported that dozens of residents, mainly children and women, were treated for shock due to the bombardment.

Abu Salmiyya added that the ongoing Israeli attacks violate the basic principles of human rights as they are mainly targeting heavily populated civilian areas.

On its side, the Israeli Army claimed that the bombardment targeted two border tunnels and three training sites used by Qassam fighters.

The army warned of further escalation, and held the Hamas movement responsible for any deterioration of the situation in the coastal region.

http://www.imemc.org/article/61804

Unchecked "Jewish terror" in West Bank

... "likely to ignite the terroritories".

Contributor: "PAJU"

A senior Israeli army commander has warned that unchecked "Jewish terror" against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank threatens to plunge the territory into another conflict.

In unusually outspoken comments, Major General Avi Mizrahi took aim at extremist Israeli settlers, and said the yeshiva, or religious seminary, in Yitzhar, one of the most radical Jewish strongholds in the West Bank, should be closed, calling it a source of terror against Palestinians.

The general's comments are likely to put him at odds with Israel's pro-settler government, which has resisted US-led efforts to curb settlement expansion in a bid to revive stalled peace talks. The foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, himself lives in a West Bank settlement. All settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.

"What's happening in the field is terrorism," General Mizrahi told Israel’s Channel 2's Meet the Press, and it "needs to be dealt with." The Israeli army, he said, fears "terrorism against Palestinians is likely to ignite the territories". Palestinians and Israeli NGOs frequently accuse the army of siding with settlers in conflagrations with Palestinians, prompting the army to respond that it is obliged to protect its citizens and does not set policy.

Human rights groups suggest that the more radical settlers, many of whom oppose a two-state solution on the premise that the whole of Israel is bequeathed to them by God, are agitating against Palestinian moves to seek statehood recognition at the United Nations in September.

The Israeli commander General Mizrahi blamed the courts for failing to rein in the most radical of the settlers – a small proportion of the roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers who are living beyond the Green Line (Israel’s internationally recognized border) in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Adapted from this article.

Israeli Warplanes Raid Gaza Strip

The Israeli occupation forces revealed for the first time on
Monday the "Tammuz" anti-tank missile

Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip early Tuesday after an Israeli woman was moderately injured by a projectile fired from Gaza into the occupied southern territories.

The projectile landed in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, witnesses and the Israeli military said.

The air raid targeted a tunnel dug under the border between the south of the Strip and Egypt, near Rafah, the Palestinian witnesses said. The Israeli army confirmed the target saying "aircraft attacked a tunnel used by smugglers". There were no casualties reported in the raid.
  
Two explosions also shook Gaza City. The source of the blasts was not immediately clear.

http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/seccatpage.php?frid=23&seccatid=18