Displacement of Palestinians 'a war crime'

Spokesman for Jerusalem mayor dismisses NGO report as based on "misleading facts, blatant lies and political spin".

ICAHD says it is virtually impossible for Palestinians to
obtain building permits in occupied East Jerusalem [Reuters]

Israel is forcing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy that might constitute a war crime, a prominent Israeli non-governmental organisation said, a charge rejected by Jerusalem's mayor.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) has presented the United Nations with its findings on Monday and demanded an inquiry, saying Israel targeted Palestinians by demolishing homes, revoking residency and eroding quality of life.

"We are witnessing a process of ethnic displacement," said Michael Sfard, a lawyer who helped draw up a 73-page report into the issue. "Israel is manifestly and seriously violating international law ... and the motivation is demographic."
Stephan Miller, a spokesman for Israel's mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, dismissed the report. He said in a statement it was based on "misleading facts, blatant lies and political spin about Jerusalem, so I'm sure the UN will enjoy it".

Israel seized East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed the area and surrounding West Bank villages into a Jerusalem municipality that it declared the united and eternal capital of Israel.

World powers have not recognised Israel's annexations - which, according to international law, are illegal. Moreover, Palestinians want E Jerusalem for the capital of their future state.

There are some 300,000 Palestinians residents in East Jerusalem, representing about 35 per cent of the city's total

population, but ICAHD said that since Israel took control of largely Arab areas it had systematically prevented their
development.

One third of land in East Jerusalem was taken for the construction of Jewish neighbourhoods, while only nine per cent
of the remaining land is legally available for housing. This has all been built on, making expansion impossible.

ICAHD said it was virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits to house their growing families.

"They have no other option than to leave East Jerusalem, build illegally or live in appalling, cramped conditions," said Emily Schaeffer, who authored the report.
'War crime'

Those who leave lose residency rights if they are gone for seven or more years and cannot return.

Some 14,000 Palestinians lost their residency between 1967 and 2010, with half of those revocations taking place after 2006, ICAHD said.

Residency entitles you to Israeli health care and national insurance benefits.
Those who built houses illegally, lived in fear of having their property demolished and also faced hefty fines.

Israel demolished more than 2,000 homes in East Jerusalem since 1967, with 771 being pulled down between 2000-2011. A further 1,500 demolition orders are pending execution.

"Palestinians will de facto be deported from East Jerusalem, not by using guns or trucks, but by not allowing them to live a decent, normal life," Sfard said.

Because the annexation of East Jerusalem was not recognised, Palestinians living there should be considered as a people under occupation, ICAHD said. As such, Israel had no right to strip them of residency or demolish their homes.

"There is a suspicion that a war crime is taking place and that is why an investigation should take place," said Sfard

Answering Judge Goldstone’s defense and denial of Israeli apartheid

Submitted by Ali Abunimah

 

What does it mean that Judge Richard Goldstone – he of the Goldstone report – has penned a desperate and propagandistic defense of Israel against what he calls the “apartheid slander” in The New York Times?

It’s a classic case of the judge doth protest too much:

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

It is remarkable that Goldstone felt a need to launch a frontal attack on the Russell Tribunal in The New York Times. A more confident Israel (and its ardent supporters) would simply ignore it. It is a sign of weakness and panic – and therefore a good sign – that Israel is becoming hypersensitive to any and all criticism, just like apartheid South Africa in the decade before it was replaced by a democracy of all its citizens (Read Frank Barat’s op-ed on The Russell Tribunal here on The Electronic Intifada).

Goldstone attempts to argue – disingenuously – that there is no comparison to be made between Israel and apartheid South Africa:

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

That is precisely what exists. Israel itself declares that it is a “Jewish state” and demands that Palestinians and the world recognize it as such. Stemming from this self-definition, which is based on a genetic, not voluntary, definition of who is a Jew, Israel claims the right to carry out all sorts of inhumane acts especially excluding indigenous Palestinians exiled from their land from returning solely because they are not Jews. Israel explicitly wants to maintain a Jewish majority in order to dominate and exclude Palestinians from having any effective political voice.

The monstrosity of Israel’s siege and war on Gaza exists precisely and only for this purpose. Did Goldstone ask himself how things would be different if the 1.6 million people – 80 percent of them refugees – corralled into Gaza were Jews? Of course Israel would welcome them back to their lands and villages with open arms, restore their property, and give them full political rights and a whole range of financial incentives.

Instead, just because they are not Jews, Israel has deprived them of their land, property, political rights, the right to travel and subjects them to a siege in which the amount of calories they are allowed is governed by “mathematical formulas.” And of course Israel bombs them if they resist in any manner.

If Palestinians in Gaza were excluded and besieged just for being black instead of just for being Palestinian (and not Jewish) would Goldstone dare to pretend that this was not the most pernicious form of ethno-racial discrimination and inhumanity? And what’s even worse is that Goldstone blames the victims:

To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab populations than Israelis should accept. Much of it is chosen by the communities themselves.

Is he unaware that Palestinians did not choose to be forced from their land during the Nakba and since any more than blacks chose to be forcibly displaced into apartheid South Africa’s bantustans? Is he aware that when Israel has refused to build a single new town for Palestinian citizens of Israel while building a thousand new towns for Jews since 1948, it is solely the Israel apartheid state that has made that choice?

When Israel forces its curriculum on Palestinian schoolchildren in eastern occupied Jerusalem, does he see no parallel with the South African apartheid regime’s effort – which led to the Soweto uprising of 1976 – to force black schoolchildren to learn Afrikaans?

It almost seems like Goldstone is mocking Palestinians when he writes the following:

I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterized as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use “white” toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a “pass.” Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no “black” ambulance to rush them to a “black” hospital. “White” hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.

Has Goldstone not noticed that for most of Israel’s existence it has ruled through force and tyranny over millions of Palestinians who’ve had no right to vote? Formal apartheid lasted 46 years in South Africa, from 1948 to 1994. Israel’s “temporary” occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has now lasted 44 years (and its occupation of all Palestine 63 years)

Is he unaware that Israeli Jewish women and Palestinian women risk jail just for going to the beach together or for how many years Gazans could not use their own beaches because they were reserved for settlers? Does he truly have no idea how many Palestinian women have died in childbirth because Palestinian ambulances and never Jewish ambulances are held up at checkpoints?

If Goldstone wants to learn more about Israel’s apartheid he can read the detailed study by South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council published in 2009, which found that Israel indeed practices apartheid and colonialism.

When Goldstone was under constant assault by Israel and its attack dogs for his role in writing the UN report documenting Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, those close to him always publicly insisted that the judge was an ardent Zionist. Goldstone his proven that beyond any doubt with his earlier attempt to back away from his report, and now this sad piece in The New York Times.

But if anything, Goldstone’s shameless pandering to Israel only adds credibility to his earlier work: if someone so anxious to defend Israel in spite of the facts could not even cover up its atrocious crimes in Gaza, then indeed there is a case for Israel’s war criminal leaders to answer and pursuing them must not stop until they are brought to justice.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/answering-judge-goldstones-defense-and-denial-israeli-apartheid#.Tq-PTrLd6-k

Dual Citizenship -- Loyal to Whom? List of Politicians with israeli Dual Citizenship.

By Rula Nad

Can one imagine a Japanese citizen serving in the Pentagon during WWII? Or how about a citizen of the Soviet Union holding a cabinet position in the White House during the Cold War?

Today's conflicts are centered in the Middle East. America needs to balance foreign policies towards oil producing Arab nations with our goal being peace and stability in the region. This places a burdon on our government to be even-handed in our dealings with the Arab world and Israel. While the Iraq War was waged on LIES  about Weapons of Mass Destruction and revenge for 911, the real reason has emerged as a well designed global plan to improve the power and leverage of Israel. Added to this policy is yet another potential blow to American interests and security -- the impending War with Iran. This war will be waged for the security of Israel and will be paid for by the blood of American soldiers and the hard-earned money of American citizens whose quality of life is inversely tied to the cost of petrolium.

Recently, in their much lauded paper, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Harvard professor, Stephen Walt, and University of Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer, focused attention on the strong Israeli lobby which has a powerful influence over American foreign policies (see BBC article). They detail the influence that this lobby has exerted, forming a series of international policies which can be viewed as in direct opposition to the interests and security of the American people. These acts and policies are more often than not carried out by US government appointees who hold powerful positions and who are dual American-Israeli citizens. Since the policies they support are often exclusively beneficial to Israel, often to the detriment of America, it has been argued that their loyalties are misdirected.

A few classic examples can be cited here.

Jonathan Jay Pollard was an American-Israeli citizen who worked for the US government. He is well known because he stole more secrets from the U.S. than has any other spy in American history. During his interrogation Pollard said he felt compelled to put the "interests of my state" ahead of his own. Although as a U.S. Navy counter-intelligence specialist he had a top-secret security clearance, by "my state" he meant the state of Israel.

Literally tens of thousands of Americans holding U.S. passports admit they feel a primary allegiance to the state of Israel. In many instances, these Americans vote in Israeli elections, wear Israeli uniforms and fight in Israeli wars. Many are actively engaged both in the confiscation of Palestinian lands and in the Israeli political system. Three examples come to mind:

One is Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the militant Jewish Defense League in the U.S. in the 1960s, then emigrated to Israel where, eventually, he was elected to the Knesset. Until he was shot and killed at one of his U.S. fund-raising rallies in 1990, the Brooklyn-born rabbi shuttled between Tel Aviv and New York, where he recruited militant American Jews for his activities in Israel against Palestinians. He claimed to be a "dual citizen" of America and Israel.

Another Jewish American, James Mahon from Alexandria, Virginia, reportedly was on a secret mission to kill PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat when he was shot in 1980 by an unknown assailant. When he was shot, Mahon held an American M-16 in his hand and a U.S. passport in his pocket.

Then there was Alan Harry Goodman, an American Jew who left his home in Baltimore, Maryland, flew to Israel and served in the Israeli army. Then, on April 11, 1982, armed with an Uzi submachine gun, he walked, alone, to Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine, where he opened fire, killing two Palestinians and wounding others. Both the U.S. and Israeli governments played down the incident, as did the media.

Most recently, US Navy Petty Officer, Ariel J. Weinmann, while serving at or near Bahrain, Mexico, and Austria, "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation (Israel), [attempted] to communicate, deliver or transmit classified CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET information relating to the national defense, to a representative, officer, agent or employee of a foreign government." Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 after being listed as "a deserter by his command," according to the US Navy. The information he gathered was supplied to Israel.

The examples of Kahane, Mahonm, Goodman and Weinmann raise the question of when a U.S. citizen ceases to be, or should cease to be, a U.S. citizen. U.S. Law at one time clearly stated that an American citizen owed first allegiance to the United States. A U.S. citizen should not fight in a foreign army or hold high office in a foreign country without risking expatriation. What the heck happened?

The 1940 Nationality Act

Section 401 (e) of the 1940 Nationality Act provides that a U.S. citizen, whether by birth or naturalization, "shall lose his [U.S.] nationality by...voting in a political election in a foreign state."

This law was tested many times. In 1958, for instance, an American citizen named Perez voted in a Mexican election. The case went to the Supreme Court, where the majority opinion held that Perez must lose his American nationality. The court said Congress could provide for expatriation as a reasonable way of preventing embarrassment to the United States in its foreign relations.

But then something very odd happened.

In 1967 an American Jew, Beys Afroyim received an exemption that set a precedent exclusively for American Jews. Afroyim, born in Poland in 1895, emigrated to America in 1912, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1926. In 1950, aged 55, he emigrated to Israel and became an Israeli citizen. In 1951 Afroyim voted in an Israeli Knesset election and in five political elections that followed. So, by all standards he lost his American citizenship -- right? Wrong.

After living in Israel for a decade, Afroyim wished to return to New York. In 1960, he asked the U.S. Consulate in Haifa for an American passport. The Department of State refused the application, invoking section 401 (e) of the Nationality Act -- the same ruling that had stripped the American citizen named Perez of his U.S. citizenship.

Attorneys acting for Afroyim took his case to a Washington, DC District Court, which upheld the law. Then his attorneys appealed to the Court of Appeals. This court also upheld the law. The attorneys for Afroyim then moved the case on to the Supreme Court. Here, with Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson's former attorney and one of the most powerful Jewish Americans, casting the swing vote, the court voted five to four in favor of Afroyim. The court held that the U.S. government had no right to "rob" Afroyim of his American citizenship!

The court, reversing its previous judgment as regards the Mexican American, ruled that Afroyim had not shown "intent" to lose citizenship by voting in Israeli elections. Huh?

While Washington claims it has a "good neighbor" policy with Mexico, the U.S. does not permit Mexicans to hold dual nationality. The US makes them become either U.S. or Mexican -- you can't be both. But the U.S., in its special relationship with Israel, has become very sympathetic to allowing Israeli-Americans to retain two nationalities and allowing U.S. citizens not only to hold public office in Israel, but to hold US government positions as well! No other country holds this special exception to our laws of citizenship.

So, you might ask, are there any other dual Israel-American citizens who hold US government positions that could compromise American security? Yes. Consider the following list that I obtained on the web:

Michael Mukasey
Recently appointed as US Attorney General. Mukasey also was the judge in the litigation between developer Larry Silverstein and several insurance companies arising from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Michael Chertoff
Former Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department; now head of Homeland Security.

Richard Perle
One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media.

Paul Wolfowitz
Former Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board, in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz is a close associate of Perle, and reportedly has close ties to the Israeli military. His sister lives in Israel. Wolfowitz came from the above mentioned Jewish thinktank, JINSA. Wolfowitz was the number two leader within the administration behind this Iraq war mongering. He later was appointed head of the World Bank but resigned under pressure from World Bank members over a scandal involving his misuse of power.

Douglas Feith
Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor at the Pentagon. He is a close associate of Perle and served as his Special Counsel. Like Perle and the others, Feith is a pro-Israel extremist, who has advocated anti-Arab policies in the past. He is closely associated with the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America, which even attacks Jews that don't agree with its extremist views. Feith frequently speaks at ZOA conferences. Feith runs a small law firm, Feith and Zell, which only has one International office, in Israel. The majority of their legal work is representing Israeli interests. His firm's own website stated, prior to his appointment, that Feith "represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturer." Feith basically represents the Israeli War Machine. Feith also came from the Jewish thinktank JINSA. Feith, like Perle and Wolfowitz, are campaigning hard for this Israeli proxy war against Iraq.

Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
The former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with expertise in Iranian policy issues who worked in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and reported directly to Feith's deputy, William Luti, was sentenced January 20, 2006, "to more than 12 years in prison for giving classified information to an Israeli diplomat" and members of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).Franklin will "remain free while the government continues with the wider case" and his "prison time could be sharply reduced in return for his help in prosecuting" former AIPAC members Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, [who] are scheduled to go on trial in April [2006]. Franklin admitted that he met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. Rosen and Weissman would later share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials." (source: sourcewatch.com).

Edward Luttwak
Member of the National Security Study Group of the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. Luttwak is reportedly an Israeli citizen and has taught in Israel. He frequently writes for Israeli and pro-Israeli newspapers and journals. Luttwak is an Israeli extremist whose main theme in many of his articles is the necessity of the U.S. waging war against Iraq and Iran.

Henry Kissinger
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Kissinger sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle. For detailed information about Kissinger's evil past, read Seymour Hersch's book (Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House). Kissinger likely had a part in the Watergate crimes, Southeast Asia mass murders (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), Installing Chilean mass murdering dictator Pinochet, Operation Condor's mass killings in South America, and more recently served as Serbia's Ex-Dictator Slobodan Milosevic's Advisor. He consistently advocated going to war against Iraq. Kissinger is the Ariel Sharon of the U.S. Unfortunately, President Bush nominated Kissinger as chairman of the September 11 investigating commission. It's like picking a bank robber to investigate a fraud scandal. He later declined this job under enormous protests.

Dov Zakheim
Dov Zakheim is an ordained rabbi and reportedly holds Israeli citizenship. Zakheim attended Jew's College in London and became an ordained Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. He was adjunct professor at New York's Jewish Yeshiva University. Zakheim is close to the Israeli lobby.

Dov Zakheim is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in 2000 a co-author of the Project for the New American Century's position paper, Rebuilding America's Defenses, advocating the necessity for a Pearl-Harbor-like incident to mobilize the country into war with its enemies, mostly Middle Eastern Muslim nations.

He was appointed by Bush as Pentagon Comptroller from May 4, 2001 to March 10, 2004. At that time he was unable to explain the disappearance of $1 trillion dollars. Actually, nearly three years earlier, Donald Rumsfeld announced on September 10, 2001 that an audit discovered $2.3 trillion was also missing from the Pentagon books. That story, as mentioned, was buried under 9-11's rubble. The two sums disappeared on Zakheim's watch. We can only guess where that cash went.

Despite these suspicions, on May 6, 2004, Zakheim took a lucrative position at Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the most prestigious strategy consulting firms in the world. One of its clients then was Blessed Relief, a charity said to be a front for Osama bin Laden. Booz, Allen & Hamilton then also worked closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the research arm of the Department of Defense.

Judicial Inc's bio of Dov tells us Zakheim is a dual Israeli/American citizen and has been tracking the halls of US government for 25 years, casting defense policy and influence on Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. Judicial Inc points out that most of Israel's armaments were gotten thanks to him. Squads of US F-16 and F-15 were classified military surplus and sold to Israel at a fraction of their value.

Kenneth Adelman
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Adelman also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle, and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supported going to war against Iraq. Adelman frequently is a guest on Fox News, and often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. Through his racism or ignorance, he actually called Arabs "anti-Semitic" on Fox News (11/28/2001), when he could have looked it up in the dictionary to find out that Arabs by definition are Semites.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Vice President Dick Cheney's ex-Chief of Staff. As chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, it helps explains why Cheney is so gun-ho to invade Iran. Libby is longtime associate of Wolfowitz. Libby was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Marc Rich, whom Clinton pardoned, in his last days as president. Libby was recently found guilty of lying to Federal investigators in the Valerie Plame affair, in which Plame, a covert CIA agent, was exposed for political revenge by the Bush administration following her husband's revelations about the lies leading to the Iraq War.

Robert Satloff
U.S. National Security Council Advisor, Satloff was the executive director of the Israeli lobby's "think tank," Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Many of the Israeli lobby's "experts" come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.

Elliott Abrams
National Security Council Advisor. He previously worked at Washington-based "Think Tank" Ethics and Public Policy Center. During the Reagan Adminstration, Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State, handling, for the most part, Latin American affairs. He played an important role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which involved illegally selling U.S. weapons to Iran to fight Iraq, and illegally funding the contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. He also actively deceived three congressional committees about his involvement and thereby faced felony charges based on his testimony. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. A year later, former President Bush (Senior) granted Abrams a full pardon. He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Reagan Administration's State Department.

Marc Grossman
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State. Grossman is one of many of the pro-Israel Jewish officials from the Clinton Administration that Bush has promoted to higher posts.

Richard Haass
Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at large. He is also Director of National Security Programs and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the first Bush (Sr) Administration who sat on the National Security Council, and who consistently advocated going to war against Iraq. Haass is also a member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

Robert Zoellick
U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position. He is also one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Bush (Jr) Administration who advocated invading Iraq and occupying a portion of the country in order to set up a Vichy-style puppet government. He consistently advocates going to war against Iran.

Ari Fleischer
Ex- White House Spokesman for the Bush (Jr) Administration. Prominent in the Jewish community, some reports state that he holds Israeli citizenship. Fleischer is closely connected to the extremist Jewish group called the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala, and hold very extremist and insulting views of non-Jews. Fleischer was the co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum. He received the Young Leadership Award from the American Friends of Lubavitch in October, 2001.

James Schlesinger
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Schlesinger also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supported going to war against Iraq. Schlesinger is also a commissioner of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

David Frum
White House speechwriter behind the "Axis of Evil" label. He lumped together all the lies and accusations against Iraq for Bush to justify the war.

Joshua Bolten
White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten was previously a banker, former legislative aide, and prominent in the Jewish community.

John Bolton
Former UN Representative and Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Bolton is also a Senior Advisor to President Bush. Prior to this position, Bolton was Senior Vice President of the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktank, AEI. He recently (October 2002) accused Syria of having a nuclear program, so that they can attack Syria after Iraq. He must have forgotten that Israel has 400 nuclear warheads, some of which are thermonuclear weapons (according to a recent U.S. Air Force report).

David Wurmser
Special Assistant to John Bolton (above), the under-secretary for arms control and international security. Wurmser also worked at the AEI with Perle and Bolton. His wife, Meyrav Wurmser, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, co-founded the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri),a Washington-based Israeli outfit which distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light.

Eliot Cohen
Member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor. Like Adelman, he often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. More recently, he wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal openly admitting his rascist hatred of Islam claiming that Islam should be the enemy, not terrorism.

Mel Sembler
President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A Prominent Jewish Republican and Former National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Export-Import Bank facilitates trade relationships between U.S. businesses and foreign countries, specifically those with financial problems.

Steve Goldsmith
Senior Advisor to the President, and Bush's Jewish domestic policy advisor. He also served as liaison in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President. He was the former mayor of Indianapolis. He is also friends with Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and often visits Israel to coach mayors on privatization initiatives.

Adam Goldman
White House's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community.

Joseph Gildenhorn
Bush Campaign's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was the DC finance chairman for the Bush campaign, as well as campaign coordinator, and former ambassador to Switzerland.

Christopher Gersten
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS. Gersten was the former Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Husband of Labor Secretary.

Mark Weinberger
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs.

Samuel Bodman
Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He was the Chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bonnie Cohen
Under Secretary of State for Management.

Ruth Davis
Director of Foreign Service Institute, who reports to the Office of Under Secretary for Management. This Office is responsible for training all Department of State staff (including ambassadors).

Daniel Kurtzer
Ambassador to Israel.

Cliff Sobel
Ambassador to the Netherlands.

Stuart Bernstein
Ambassador to Denmark.

Nancy Brinker
Ambassador to Hungary

Frank Lavin
Ambassador to Singapore.

Ron Weiser
Ambassador to Slovakia.

Mel Sembler
Ambassador to Italy.

Martin Silverstein
Ambassador to Uruguay.

Lincoln Bloomfield
Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs.

Jay Lefkowitz
Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Ken Melman
White House Political Director.

Brad Blakeman
White House Director of Scheduling.

Shalit Got Off Lightly

Musa Al-Shaer

Considering a Palestinian kid throwing stones gets imprisonment and mashed testicles…

by Stuart Littlewood

Standing his ground against evil invaders like Shalit – if caught this youngster can expect imprisonment and mashed testicles.

While the whole world, it seemed, was in ecstasy over the freeing of Gilad Shalit, I was amazed to discover that the Israeli tank-gunner had been made an honorary citizen of Rome, Paris, Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh and New Orleans.
Knowing what we know, that’s pretty sick stuff.

Europe’s and America’s hypocrites

Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, said that honoring Shalit in this way was “a gesture of high symbolic value, with which Rome chooses to salute the values of life, of solidarity and of respect for the human rights.” He added, “You cannot win using violence, kidnapping and ransom.”

Has he told that to the Israeli government?

And how on earth does Shalit embody the values of life and respect for human rights?

Has Mayor Alemanno any idea of the death and destruction a 105mm or 120mm tank round can inflict? Tank-gunner Shalit was deployed on the Gaza border to implement Israel’s criminal policy and to terrorise the Gazan population into submission.  Those tanks make frequent incursions into Gaza to shell civilian targets. When Shalit was captured in June 2006 the Israelis were already tightening their illegal blockade on Gaza.

Shalit, like his comrades, was implicated in an appalling crime against humanity and he paid the price – not to the proper authority, the International Criminal Court, which should have nailed his superiors long before now, but to the victims of Israel’s military aggression.

EXCLUSIVE IDF INTERVIEW – Israeli Soldiers

Alex Thompson has their story…

Channel 4 News – Dispatches from Gaza – 26 January 2011

Paris City Council and its mayor voted unanimously to honour Shalit. And President Sarkozy wrote to the tank-gunner: “It is time that those responsible for your detention make a decision and end your intolerable and outrageous imprisonment.”

Weren’t any of these civic dignitaries the slightest bit concerned about the thousands Palestinian prisoners rotting in Israeli jails, many without charge and many having been in captivity far longer than Shalit.

Nael Barghouthi, a Palestinian, had been imprisoned by Israel for 33 years and was probably the longest serving political prisoner ever. His incarceration began on April 4, 1978. Wouldn’t the City Council of Paris like to make him an honorary citizen? What about the good councillors of Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh and New Orleans? Aren’t they fair-minded enough to honour Barghouti?

Jubilant Nael Barghouti Longest Serving Palestinian
Political Prisoner Returns to Ramallah to Hugs and Harvest

I doubt it, for the simple reason Barghouti was (shock-horror!) a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, forerunner of Hamas. And Hamas (shock-horror!) is listed as a terror organization. Isn’t the terror organization Shalit belongs to, the Israeli army of illegal occupation, far worse?

Hamas is branded a terrorist group only because it suits the purpose of a gang of Zionist psychopaths in the White House and in Whitehall. The definition of terrorism is set out in Executive Order 13224, Section 3, signed 23 September 2001 by George W Bush. It’s an activity that —

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (ii) appears to be intended

(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(c) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

You have to laugh. The dummies are describing exactly what they themselves do.

Israel – world-class pioneer of terrorism

Another laugh is a “roll-call” of who introduced terrorism to the Middle East – Israel! Nevertheless these are the claims. Can anyone refute them? (Also, take a look at this video – ” Who were the first terrorists in the Middle East?”

• Bombs in Cafés: first used by Zionists in Palestine on March 17, 1937 in Jaffa. (actually grenades).

• Bombs on Buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine Aug. 20-Sept. 26, 1937

• Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL and LHI in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Morris, Righteous Victims, p681.)

• Bombs in Market Places: first used by Zionists on July 6, 1938 in Haifa. (Delayed-action, electrically detonated)

• Bombing of a passenger Ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows.

• Bombing of Hotels: first used by Zionists on July 22, 1946 against the British administration in the St David Hotel, Jerusalem (Menachem Begin went on to become Prime Minister of Israel).

• Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on October 1, 1946 against the British Embassy in Rome.

• Mining of Ambulances: First used by Zionists on October 31, 1946 in Petah Tikvah

• Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa, 5 December 1946.

• Letter Bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them.

• Parcel Bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London, 3 September 1947.

• Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947.

• Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists 4 Jan 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26.

• Aircraft hijacking: world-first by Israeli jets Dec 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover 5 spies). 14 years before any Palestinian.

You reap what you sow.

The only form of violent terrorism not introduced into Palestine by the Zionists was suicide bombing, the desperate last resort of people fighting illegal occupation of their homeland.

Mashing testicles for stone-throwing

Those who confuse freedom-fighters with terrorists are given valuable advice in this extract from Mhara Costello’s splendidly powerful poem…

Show me the man who will not fight, to save his child, his home, his right!

You can call him what you like, you’re not in his sorry plight

Cowards stay and Martyrs go, I know not where, but this I know

Speak your truth and stand your ground, fight your corner

When all around point the finger, purse the lips, pin the label, ‘Terrorist’!

For the whole thing see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRgKH0j3yoE .

Heretic productions present the powerful work of Mhara Costello – 22nd August 2011

Snordelhans

So here’s a question for the great and the good in Rome, Paris, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and so forth… Don’t you think the lad in the photo standing his ground and throwing stones at the advancing invader shows a lot more guts than the Israeli tank-gunner sitting behind his armour plate picking out soft targets among the women and children packed into the Gaza Strip?

Wouldn’t they like to honour that youngster instead?

I said in an earlier article that 8,000 Palestinians were still in Israeli jails. But the figure differs in every report I see. The Voice of Palestine says its 5,300 including 22 lawmakers and 9 women. 22 have spent more than 25 years behind bars, which puts Shalit’s piddling 5 years into sharper context.

Want to hear something that’s even more disgusting? According to figures released by the Israeli Prison Service and Defence of Children International-Palestine, at the end of September 2011 there were 164 Palestinian children (12 to 17 years) detained by Israel, including 35 between the ages of 12 and 15 years.

Probably for throwing stones at their tanks.

By all accounts Shalit was returned in good condition. He can thank his lucky stars he wasn’t treated like the Israelis treated 15 year-old Benan Oudeh, whose testicles had to be amputated after he’d been badly tortured on suspicion of throwing stones at Israeli troops occupying his West Bank home town of Qalqilya in 1989. http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/israelis-pay-out-on-abuse-claims/2006/02/02/1138836370594.html

There are countless reports of how Israelis enjoy inflicting physical abuse such as sleep deprivation and suspending prisoners – even children – for long periods in agonising positions; and countless complaints from victims who say they were severely beaten and deprived of food, water and medical treatment or access to bathrooms.

If the sentence for throwing stones at invading troops is imprisonment and mashed testicles, what should you get for firing tank shells at innocent civilians?

---

• WHAT NAEL BARGHOUTHI MISSED
• Nael al-Barghouthi: we are soldiers returning to their bases with high spirits

‘Free Palestine’ Book Now On Internet

Reign of The Flesh-eating ZoMBies! A Real-Life Hallowe’en Story

by Kevin Barrett

Here’s a horror movie script: A pack of flesh-eating zombies establishes total control over the world.

But because the zombies dominate the media, and have infiltrated other power centers, ordinary people don’t realize it.

When victims are found dead, half-devoured, huge chunks of flesh ripped out of their cadavers, human-like teeth marks up and down what’s left of their skin, the zombie coroner rules it a heart attack. And when witnesses contest the coroner’s ruling, insisting they saw a bunch of zombies ripping flesh off the victim with their teeth and sucking down the bloody strands like spaghetti, the witnesses are either bought off, or suffer similar “heart attacks” themselves.

If only this were just a horror movie.

The hideous truth is that the ZoMBies – Zionists, Militarists, and Banksters – have already taken over much of the world. Their secret government, which overrules democracy and stages and covers up murderous atrocities on a regular basis, is rarely if ever acknowledged by such mainstream institutions as government, academia, and big media.

In the horror movies, zombies are parasites. They don’t do any real, productive work. They just feast off human flesh.

Zionist-Militarist-Bankster ZoMBies are also killer-parasites.

The Zionists have become a humungous trillion-dollar leech sucking the blood out of the American body politic. They are trying to sustain a genocidal settler-colony fifty years after settler colonialism died. The whole world – especially their nearest neighbors – loathes them and longs to put them out of their misery. Their situation is hopeless. They only survive due to the Amazon-river-sized flood of hot, fresh blood that they suck continuously out of the ever-more-anemic USA. The Zionist parasite is killing the American host.

The militarists are also parasites. Sure, they have a job to do: Defend the borders. But the USA could defend its borders for a minuscule fraction of its current military budget. Because the militarists have the guns, they can point them at the civilian sector and say: Give us a hundred times more than we need to defend the borders! And the civilian sector – the productive sector – has no choice but to comply. If someone dissents, like JFK or MLK or Paul Wellstone, they are made an example of. With all that extra money, the militarist parasites have plenty of means to run around the world stirring up unnecessary trouble, inventing imaginary threats, and brainwashing the public into believing the puppet show is real. And because military spending kills economies (www.RealEconomy.com) the military parasite is killing the civilian host.

But if you thought the Zionists and militarists were parasites, get a load of the banksters! Like militarists, bankers supposedly have a job to do: Provide a safe place for deposits, and make loans. But this job was a form of organized crime throughout most of history, because charging interest on loans – usury – has always been considered one of the worst of crimes. So the banking sector was always the top tier of organized crime.

The banksters became even more gargantuan parasites when they began committing the crime euphemistically described as “fractional reserve lending” – a fancy term for an exceptionally nasty form of fraud. (Watch The Money Masters for details.) By lending out far more paper money than they had gold in their vaults backing it, these counterfeiters built a financial dynasty. Soon they had enough money to bribe the politicians to let them, the bankster criminals, create the entire money supply out of nothing by lending it into existence at interest. Since then, the banksters have ruled. Democracy is a fraud, a puppet show designed to distract the masses.

It is the banksters who sit at the apex of the Zionist-Militarist-Bankster power pyramid. They are the real ZoMBie kings. As the Rothschilds say, “give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes its laws.”

Who gains when the US goes broke by hemorrhaging a trillion dollars to Israel and trillions more to the military? The banksters. Where do you think the US has to borrow all that money from? (It could print the money itself, as the Constitution mandates – but because we’re living in a horror movie where ZoMBies rule, when a president tries that, as Jack Kennedy did, his skull will soon explode into a splatter of blood, brains and bone splinters.)


The US is going broke, getting in deeper and deeper debt to the banksters. Our flesh is being devoured. Our economy is a walking corpse.

As the stench of death spreads across the land, ordinary people are gathering on Wall Street and elsewhere to defend themselves against the ZoMBies.

Will this one have a happy ending?

Got me. Ask George Romero.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/10/26/reign-of-the-flesh-eating-zombies-a-real-life-halloween-story/

Child Suffers Quadriplegia After Being Shot In The Neck

Aseel after being shot

by Saed Bannoura

Head of the neurological department at the Al Maqassed Hospital, in East Jerusalem, Prof. Sami Hussein, stated that surgeons operated on Aseel Ara'ra, 4, following a gunshot injury to the neck, and that she is currently at the Intensive Care Unit. He added that Aseel's injury caused Quadriplegia.

Hussein stated that the bullet entered her neck on the left side smashing the fourth vertebrae of her spine before exiting from the her right shoulder.

Her family said that she was shot by Israeli soldiers during training at a nearby military base.

Updated from
Child Seriously Injured In Anata
Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:23:59

Palestinian medical sources in occupied Jerusalem reported that a 4-year-old child, was shot by a stray live round in her neck fired by Israeli soldiers during training at the Anatot military base, built on lands illegally annexed from the residents Anata Palestinian town, north of Jerusalem. The child suffered quadriplegia.

The child, Aseel Ara'ra, 4, was moved to the Al Maqassed Hospital, in East Jerusalem and is currently in a serious condition, the Maan News Agency, reported.

The bullet entered the left side of her neck and exited on the right causing quadriplegia, Maan added.

Her family said that the Israeli Army must take responsibility for the attack, and must conduct an investigation to prosecute those responsible for the shooting.

The family lives next to the military base in question, while the Israeli Army denied any relation to the attack.

The Ara'ra family is from a Bedouin tribe that resides in the Anata area, close to the Israeli camp. The area is under full Israeli control.

http://www.imemc.org/article/62371

What Christians Don’t Know About Israel

By Grace Halsell

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? American Presidents as well as most members of Congress support Israel -- and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel -- and Zionism -- often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.

I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window- type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad "unChosen” enemies.

In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I had learned in Sunday School.

And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. “Not write about politics?” scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a waterpipe in the Old Walled City. “We eat politics, morning, noon and night!”

As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.

My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was “free” to print news impartially.

`It shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.’

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify "news" depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn't it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn't know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I'd make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn't known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were “lost" at WETA.

The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. “Terrific,” he said of my material.

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan's. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, "He's been fired.” She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. “I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes,” he told me. “They were not pleased. They asked me, “You are not going to publish this book, are you?” I asked, "Were there mistakes?” “Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It's anti-Israel.”

Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian homes, wan ton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.

The Same Question

Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, “How come I didn't know this?" Or someone might ask, "But I haven't read about that in my newspaper.” To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post -- and most of our nation's print media - are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel -- and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem -- all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.

In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the plight of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the “mother” of The New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich, Conn., home.

She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, “You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew.”I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered -- from her point of view -- the “wrong” underdog.

As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed the galleys back with a saddened look: “My dear, have you forgotten the Holocaust?” She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of Palestinians.

I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most “liberal” U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one -- the Palestinians.

How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as “terrorists.”

Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions -- including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ -- stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.

Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”

Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, “are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become “the Bible.” And the Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity.

In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.

The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does -- even wanton murder -- as orchestrated by God.

Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.

While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots America -- the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn't know about Israel. They were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.

“They asked us,” said one delegate, “Why did you use a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn't you use an Israeli agency?” The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment. Obviously, said one delegate, “The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don't want Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel.”

---

About the Author Grace Halsell (1923-2000) was a distinguished American journalist, war correspondent, author and columnist. She was the author of 13 books, including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics.

“My opinion of Christian Zionists? They’re scum. But don’t tell them that. We need all the useful idiots we can get right now.”
Binyamin Netanyahu

The Palestinian Statehood Sham: A Donkey Heads To The Den Of Vipers

by Jonathan Azaziah

From the bantustan goes the donkey into the den of vipers...
              
While purchasing weapons from the occupier to murder our friends with snipers...

Collaborating with the beast on a rabid basis but you expect us to believe that you will end the crisis...

The two-state solution was born dead...

Palestine is bleeding and fleeting is more red...

You can’t resuscitate, reinvigorate, manipulate or bend the lifeless...

You and your clowns are stammering in defense of it...

Clamoring while the tyrannical attach strings, hammered to your appendages...

You are not Palestinian, you are from the house of treason...

You are from a gaping hole where spies and traitors flow from, worth less than the phlegm spit from the mouth of demons...

The same demons you welcome into Bethlehem and Nablus...

And you do it so effortlessly, you’re the most treacherous of maggots...

You let them stain and dishonor where the prophets walked...

You are a shame to the martyrs, nobody wants to listen to your obnoxious talk...

Your presidency is illegitimate, the other puppets are unelected...

You’re making speeches while our people are murdered by IOF in cold blood, unprotected...

Settler extremists invade our villages, churches and mosques undetected...

Desecrate what is holy to us, burn it to the ground with children aside...

And what is so monstrous is that they kill us with pride...

Amalekites expiring, goyim on fire and it thrills them inside...

They want us demilitarized....

Dead Resistance, a dead existence, what they want is us in hell degraded...

That’s why they built the wall, 709 kilometers, thinking they could demolish us and drown us in a well of hatred...

How can you make peace with a people that think a sadistic murderer like Baruch Goldstein should be celebrated...

Drunk on the notion that they’re ‘chosen,’ the racist rage of the invaders is strong...

94% of this sick society wanted the Strip completely destroyed, 71% wants to see the same for Iran...

So nobody cares about your empty speech, nobody cares about your pretty words...

Because you didn’t do a damn thing as illegally besieged Gaza’s cities burned...

Because you watch as the Zionist entity expels us and imprisons our kids...

8,000 in dungeons, 8 million refugees, none of that changes with your sickening, impotent and ridiculous bid...

Because you offer rhetoric as our homes are blown up along with our olive groves...

Our strawberries and our chickens, our bees and our flowers that glisten, now nothing but sorrow flows...

This is a joke, a sham, a scam and an insult to our people...

We know you will not defend us when the vultures will creep through...

Carry the weight o’ donkey, for the occupier whose very culture is evil...

Oslo all over again, we’ve seen and heard this game before...

We have too much dignity to be tricked by this game of yours...
                      
You’ve already admitted that when the sham is done, you’ll go back to negotiations as the animosity grows in our chest...

The peace process makes us sick, it’s nothing but a comedy show of the West...

The United Nations makes us ill and we will say it loud, we are not gonna run today...

The United Nations recognized the Zionist entity as the Nakba was underway...

750,000 of us ethnically cleansed, the UN did not care, not scream...

Did nothing as the horror unfolded at Deir Yassin...

You have no right to call us pessimistic, crazy or cynical...

Because the UN doesn’t enforce any resolution against Zionism, never called for the capture of any ‘Israeli’ war criminal...

The UN has never defended us from massacres, in fact, it has prevented us from bettering our lives...

By enslaving us with UNRWA aid, a charade is what you’re offering, a jettison from fighting, a shard of malevolence, a crime...

The UN did nothing to protect the Freedom Flotillas...

Instead, it insulted its victims by giving freedom to killers...

You are stealing away our Right of Return so you can hold power...

Well this is a wake up call donkey, enjoy the cold shower...

For 63 years, we have been murdered and ethnically cleansed, colonized, occupied and tortured by these morbid racists who are nihilists...

We have fought and survived, we have been more than patient in defying it...

So we refuse to be ruled in a bantustan by a donkey who enjoys security coordination with the Zionists...

We refuse to recognize apartheid, we refuse to recognize land theft...

Zionism is Jewish supremacism, there is no right wing, no damn left...

Every degree of this vicious ideology is annihilation of us...

Anyone who recognizes this entity just know, you have violated our trust...

We refuse to bow down to the colonizer, we refuse to accept this disgraceful plight...

So keep your rhetoric, keep your fake state while we take our rights...

We bleed for this land, so give us death and prison...

Eternal ‘no’ to the Zionist entity and eternal ‘no’ to its recognition...

We have blazed spit and a raised fist for those House Arabs who say the Zionist regime will not lose...

How dare you brainwashed fools...

Acknowledge this supremacist enterprise, that has over 30 laws in its system that discriminates and oppresses us, just because we’re not Jews...

All oppressors fall, Zionism is in this category too...

We recognize the sacrifice of our martyrs in the afterlife, basking in a splash of light, every battle story’s true...

So donkey heed the words, we will not follow you to the concert hall where oblivion sings...

Where there will only be another hellish Palestinian winter, not a Palestinian spring...

We choose Resistance, we choose life, we don’t choose your dumb fate...

We choose Palestine, tahya Falasteen, we choose one state...

We choose Right of Return, we choose equal rights...

We choose an end to this miserable 63-year occupation, we choose leaders who will see the light...

And if they will not lead then we will...

We will not be silent, we will not be still...

Do we really need to name them all, the whole lot of atrocities...

In addition to the home demolitions, our friends in prison, sexual abuse, the inability to move and the aquifer robbery...

From Jenin to Al-Aqsa, Sabra and Shatilah to Qibya, there are grave wounds...

Khan Younis to Kafr Qasim, Qana to Abbasieh to Zaytoun...

Al-Jaulan to Bint Jbeil, al-Khisas to Beit Nabala...

Al-Khalil to Marwaheen, Rafah to Ramallah...

The Nakba and the Naksa, Lebanon repeatedly and Cast Lead...

It is only by the grace of Above that we are not half past dead...

O’ donkey, the decision that you’re making is lethal...

But we don’t expect you to understand your mistake, a donkey cannot relate to an eagle...

Mighty Palestinian, we scream defiantly as the status of the king flips...

Free Palestine engraved on our wing tips...

Don’t you dare define our borders, do you hear us donkey? Don’t you even bother...

Tell your Zionist masters sorry, you shouldn’t have been their deceitful starter...

Because Palestine isn’t just the West Bank, Al-Quds and bleeding Gaza...

Palestine is everything from the river to the sea...

All holy Arab land, no Zionism in between...

Palestine is Yaffa, Nasira, Akka, Safad...

Haifa, Lifta, al-Ludd, Isdud and Naqab...

We will not mince our words, we don’t care if they aren’t televised...

The usurping Zionist entity is something that we will never recognize...

We bleed for this land, so we repeat, go ahead and give us death or prison...

Eternal ‘no’ to the Zionist entity and eternal ‘no’ to its recognition...

This land is for our children, and for it we will struggle in this forever mission...

Infinite rejection of the Zionist entity and infinite ‘no’ to its recognition...

Liberation is our collective name, and we will forever fight for this gift...

We will never give up, we will one day regain our light and its bliss...

Only holy Palestine, our beautiful, has the right to exist...

~ The End ~

http://www.maskofzion.com/

UN rights expert: Palestinian children subject to arrests, violence by Israel

UN human rights rapporteur for the Palestinian territories Richard Falk calls on Israel to adopt international guidelines for protection of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.

A United Nations human rights expert urged on Thursday the international community to step up efforts to protect Palestinians children living in the West Bank, whom he claimed are subject to violence and arrest at the hands of Israeli authorities.

In a statement to the UN General Assembly, Richard Falk, a former New York University professor, cited particular cases in which Palestinian children in the West Bank were arrested or subjected to violence.

The UN human rights rapporteur for the Palestinian territories called on Israel to adopt international guidelines for the protection of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.

“Prolonged occupation deforms the development of children through pervasive deprivations affecting health, education and overall security,” Falk said in his statement.

He said the number of Palestinian children arrested and prosecuted by Israeli authorities has risen since 2007; however, he did not give a number to support this claim. He said some of those children, who were arrested for allegedly throwing stones at the settlers, were subject to interrogation and abuse.

Falk said 178 Palestinians suffered injuries as a result of violence from Israeli settlers so far in 2011, compared to 176 cases in 2010. The violence involved stone throwing, assaults and shooting by settlers.

“There are almost daily accounts of settler vandalism against Palestinian agricultural land and villages,” he said. Falk added that several incidents were videotaped by individuals working for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization.

Israel Cuts Access to 85% of Gaza Fishing Waters

October 19, 2011 (WAFA) 

– A recent report published Tuesday by the Untied Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showed that 35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures.

The report said that the population of Gaza is 1.6 million, with over 50% under 18, and 38% of the population live in poverty.

OCHA showed that the average wage in the Gaza Strip declined by over 20% in the past six years, while 26% of the Gazan workforce, including 38% of youths, is unemployed, leading to 54% of Palestinians in Gaza are food insecure while over 75% are aid dependent.

The report showed that 50-80 million litres of partially treated sewage are dumped in the sea each day, while over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is undrinkable.

About one-third of the items in the essential drug list are out of stock, as well as 85% of schools in Gaza run on double shifts.

Since the beginning of 2010, 64 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 621 injured by Israeli forces; over 60% of casualties occurred in the access-restricted areas. Another 60 civilians were killed and 137 were injured in tunnel-related accidents.

The report said that the Israeli blockade on Gaza (through the land, air and sea) is a denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law and amounts to collective punishment. It severely restricts imports and exports, as well as the movement of people in and out of Gaza, and access to agricultural land and fishing waters.

Gazans are unable to provide for their families and the quality of infrastructure and vital services has deteriorated.

Despite measures taken to ease the blockade in June 2010 the humanitarian situation has remained extremely fragile. While imports have increased, they are still at less than 40% of the pre-2007 levels. Exports remain tightly restricted and are limited to agricultural produce to Europe, and Gazan businesses cannot access their traditional markets in Israel and the West Bank. Access to land and sea remains highly restricted.

Only a minority of the projects aimed at improving housing and vital services in Gaza, submitted for approval by the international community, have been approved by the Israeli authorities, said OCHA.

Implementation of approved projects is impeded by funding shortages affecting the operating agencies, as well as by the limited capacity at the single crossing for goods. The internal Palestinian divide is an additional factor undermining the quality of vital services.

Lack of respect for international humanitarian law has continued to result in civilian casualties, particularly during escalations in armed clashes and while enforcing access restrictions to border areas.

"Thousands of people, many of them children, risk their lives smuggling goods through the tunnels under the border with Egypt every day. The thriving tunnel industry is a direct result of ongoing restrictions on the import of construction materials, the lack of employment opportunities, and the huge reconstruction needs in Gaza," said the report.

Gazans remain isolated and cut off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory. Entry into the West Bank, either via the Israeli Erez crossing or via Jordan, is prohibited for all Gazans. The volume of people allowed through the Egyptian Rafah Crossing remains limited, with hundreds denied passage each week.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m82423&hd=&size=1&l=e

Resident Kidnapped In Hebron

by Mais Azza

Israeli soldiers kidnapped a Palestinian resident from the southern West Bank city of Hebron while heading to the Israeli Liaison Office on Thursday morning, and moved him to an unknown destination, the Palestinian News & Info Agency reported.

Media sources reported that the army installed a military blockade on the main road connecting the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, and searched several vehicles while inspecting the ID cards of the passengers.

In related news, soldiers invaded the neighborhood of Em Rukba in the village of Al Khader town, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Troops then broke into and searched several homes, and photographed them from the inside and out.

Residents living in the neighborhood in question are subject to daily Israeli attacks and provocations, local sources reported.

http://www.imemc.org/article/62325