Abbas Helps Israeli “Divide and Kill” Policy

Ever wondered why Yasser Arafat wasn’t assassinated by Israelis?

First and foremost, Arafat was a businessman. Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, co-founded the Fatah group with Yasser Arafat. He is probably no less treacherous to his people than Arafat.

As for the Goldstone’s UN report [despite this blog’s objection to the pitch, ] it has turned into a disastrous farce  for the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, co-founded the Fatah organization with Yasser Arafat. Reuters photo. Image may be subject to copyright.

“Palestinians were outraged after the authority last week, under Israeli and US pressure, abruptly halted its drive to speed the report … ” BBC reported.

The PA had initially asked the UN human rights council to refer the matter to the  Security Council, “which could in theory ask the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes prosecution.”

On the day of the vote, however, the PA announced they would support a postponement of discussions until March, 2010.

Various factions protested  in Ramallah denouncing the decision.

John Pilger, writing about president Obama’s role in the affair, said: “In colluding with the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, he bribed the Palestinian Authority to suppress a UN judgment that Israel had committed crimes against humanity in its assault on Gaza – crimes made possible with US weapons whose shipment Obama secretly approved before his inauguration.”

Thanks to Abbas, Israel bought another installment of time, at least 6 months possibly a year or more, before any more discussion could even begin. Meanwhile they are free to murder, kill and cause mayhem at will.

Related Links:

• Goldstone fall-out plagues Abbas
• 338,000 Afghan infants dying under Obama war

“I WAS WRONG!”

Jewish Mom realizes Zionist upbringing wrong

Also mirrored at ICH

Rabbis blow rams’ horns known as shofars during a flight over Israel August 10, 2009. REUTERS/Yehuda Shlezinger/Israel Hayom. Image may be subject to copyright.

“Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets have taken to the skies over Israel to battle the H1N1 flu virus, Israeli media said on Tuesday.” Reuters.

Related Links:

• Israel Page of Shame

Yes, Israel Is a Terrorist State!

Once Again, Chomsky States the Obvious!

Chomsky On Gaza

By Christiana Voniati  –

16 February, 2009
Source:  Countercurrents.org

Voniati: The international public opinion and especially the Muslim world seem to have great expectations from the historic election of Obama. Can we, in your opinion, expect any real change regarding the US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Chomsky: Not much. Quite the contrary: it may be harsher than before. In the case of Gaza, Obama maintained silence, he didn’t say a word. He said well there’s only one president so I can’t talk about it. Of course he was talking about a lot of other things but he chose not to talk about this. His campaign did repeat a statement that he had made while visiting Israel six months earlier –he had visited Sderot where the rockets hit- and he said “if this where happening to my daughters, I wouldn’t think of any reaction as legitimate”, but he couldn’t say anything about Palestinian children. Now, the attack on Gaza was at time so that it ended right before the inauguration, which is what I expected. I presume that the point was so that they could make sure that Obama didn’t have to say something, so he didn’t. And then he gave his first foreign policy declaration, it was a couple of days later when he appointed George Mitchell as his emissary, and he said nothing about Gaza except that “our paramount interest is preserving the security of Israel”. Palestine apparently doesn’t have any requirement of security. And then in his declaration he said of course we are not going to deal with Hamas -the elected government the US immediately, as soon as the government was elected in a free election the US and Israel with the help of European Union immediately started severely punishing the Palestinian population for voting in the “wrong way” in a free election and that’s what we mean by democracy. The only substantive comment he made in the declaration was to say that the arab peace plan had constructive elements, because it called for a normalization of relations with Israel and he urged the arab states to proceed with the normalization of relations. Now, he is an intelligent person, he knows that that was not what the arab peace plan said. The arab peace plan called for a two state settlement on the international border that is in accord with the long standing international consensus that the US has blocked for over 30 years and in that context of the two state settlement we should even proceed further and move towards a normalization of relations with Israel. Well, Obama carefully excluded the main content about the two state settlement and just talked about the corollary, for which a two state settlement is a precondition. Now that’s not an oversight, it can’t be. That’s a careful wording, sending the message that we are not going to change their (Israel’s) rejectionist policy. We ‘ll continue to be opposed to the international consensus on this issue, and everything else he said accords with it. We will continue in other words to support Israel’s settlement policies- those policies are undermining any possible opportunity or hope for a viable Palestinian entity of some kind. And it’s a continued reliance on force in both parts of occupied Palestine. That’s the only conclusion you could draw.

Voniati: Let us talk about the timing of the assault on the Gaza Strip. Was it accidental or did it purposefully happen in a vacuum of power? To explain myself, the global financial crisis has challenged the almost absolute US global hegemony. Furthermore, the attack on Gaza was launched during the presidential change of guard. So, did this vacuum of power benefit the Israeli assault on Gaza?

Chomsky: Well, the timing was certainly convenient since attention was focused elsewhere. There was no strong pressure on the president or other high officials of the US to say anything about it. I mean Bush was on his way out, and Obama could hide behind the pretext that he’s not yet in. And pretty much the same was in Europe, so that they could just say, well we can’t talk about it now, it’s too difficult a time. The assault was well chosen in that respect. It was well chosen in other respects too: the bombing began shortly after Hamas had offered a return to the 2005 agreement, which in fact was supported by the US. They said, ok, let’s go back to the 2005 agreement that was before Hamas was elected. That means no violence and open the borders. Closing the borders is a siege, it’s an act of war……… not very harmful but it’s an act of war. Israel of all countries insists on that. I mean Israel went to war twice in 1956 and 1967 on the grounds, it claimed, that its access to the outside world was being hampered. It wasn’t a siege, its access through the Gulf of Aqaba was being hampered. Well if that is an act of war then certainly a siege is, and so it’s understood.

So Khaled Mashaal asked for an end of the state of the war, which would include opening the borders. Well, a couple of days later, when Israel didn’t react to that, Israel attacked. The attack was timed for Saturday morning – the Sabbath day in Israel – at about 11:30, which happens to be the moment when children are leaving school and crowds are miling in the streets of this very heavily crowded city… The explicit target was police cadets… Now, there are civilians, in fact we now know that for several months the legal department of the Israeli army had been arguing against this plan because it said it was a direct attack against civilians. And of course, plenty civilians will be killed if you bomb a crowded city, especially at a time like that. But finally the legal department was sort of bludgeoned into silence by the military so they said alright. So that’s when they opened –on a Sabbath morning. Now two weeks later, Israel – on Saturday as well- blocked the humanitarian aid because they didn’t want to disgrace Sabbath. Well, that’s interesting too. But the main point about the timing was that there was an effort to undercut the efforts for a peaceful settlement and it was terminated just in time to prevent pressure on Obama to say something about it. It’s hard to believe that this isn’t conscious. We know that it was very meticulously planned for many months beforehand.

Voniati: In a recent interview with LBC, you said that the policies of Hamas are more conducive to peace than the US’s or Israel’s.

Chomsky: Oh yes, that’s clear.

Voniati: Also, that the policies of Hamas are closer to international consensus on a political peaceful settlement than those of Israel and the US. Can you explain your stance?

Chomsky: Well for several years Hamas has been very clear and explicit, repeatedly, that they favor a two state settlement on the international border. They said they would not recognize Israel but they would accept a two state settlement and a prolonged truce, maybe decades, maybe 50 years. Now, that’s not exactly the international consensus but it’s pretty close to it. On the other hand, the United States and Israel flatly reject it. They reject it in deeds, that’s why they are building all the construction development activities in the West Bank, not only in violation of international laws, US and Israel know that the illegal constructions are designed explicitly to convert the West Bank into what the architect of the policy, Arial Sharon, called bantustan. Israel takes over what it wants, break up Palestine into unviable fragments. That’s undermining a political settlement. So in deeds, yes of course they are undermining it, but also in words: that goes back to 1976 when the US vetoed the Security Council resolution put forward by the arab states which called for a two state settlement and it goes around until today. In December, last December, at the meetings of the UN’s General Assembly there were many resolutions passed. One of them was a resolution calling for recognition of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people. It didn’t call for a state, just the right of self-determination. It passed with 173 to 5. The 5 were the US, Israel and a few small pacific islands. Of course that can’t be reported in the US. So they are rejecting it even in words, as well as –more significantly- in acts. On the other hand, Hamas comes pretty close to accepting it. Now, the demand which Obama repeated on Hamas is that they must meet three conditions: they must recognize Israel’s right to exist, they must renounce violence and they must accept past agreements, and in particular the Road Map. Well, what about the US and Israel? I mean, obviously they don’t renounce violence, they reject the Road Map – technically they accepted it but Israel immediately entered 14 reservations (which weren’t reported here) which completely eliminated its content, and the US went along. So the US and Israel completely violate those two conditions, and of course they violate the first, they don’t recognize Palestine. So sure, there’s a lot to criticize about Hamas, but on these matters they seem to be much closer to –not only international opinion- but even to a just settlement than the US and Israel are.

Voniati: On the other hand, Hamas has been accused of using human shields to hide and protect itself. Israel insists that the war was a matter of defense. Is Hamas a terrorist organization, as it is accused to be? Is Israel a terrorist state?

Chomsky: Well, Hamas is accused of using human shields, rightly or wrongly. But we know that Israel does it all the time. Is Israel a terrorist state? Well yes according to official definitions. I mean, one of the main things holding up cease fire right now is that Israel insists that it will not allow a cease fire until Hamas returns a captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit – he’s very famous in the West everybody knows he was captured. Well, one day before Gilad Shalit was captured, Israeli forces went into Gaza City and kidnapped two Palestinian civilians (the Muamar Brothers) and brought them across the border to Israel in violation of international law and hid them somewhere in the huge Israeli prisons. Nobody knows what happened to them since. I mean, kidnapping civilians is a much worse crime than capturing a soldier of an attacking army. And furthermore this has been regular Israeli practice for decades. They’ve been kidnapping civilians in Lebanon or on the high seas…They take them to Israel, put them into prisons, sometimes keeping them as hostages for long periods. So you know, if the capturing of Gilad Shalit is a terrorist act, well, then israel’s regular practice supported by the US is incomparably worse. And that’s quite apart from repeated aggression and other crimes. I don’t like Hamas by any means, there is plenty to criticize about them, but if you compare their actions with US and Israel, they are minor criminals.

Voniati: Though of Jewish decent, you have been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism. How do you respond?

Chomsky: The most important comment about that was made by the distinguished statesman Abba Eban, maybe 35 years ago, in an address to the American people. He said that there are two kinds of criticism of Zionism (by Zionism I mean the policies of the state of Israel). One is criticism by anti-Semites and the other is criticism by neurotic self-hating Jews. That eliminates 100% of possible criticism. The neurotic self-hating Jews, he actually mentioned two, I was one and I.F. Stone, a well-known writer was another). I mean that’s the kind of thing that would come out of a communist party in its worst days. But you see, I can’t really be called anti-semite because I’m jewish so I must be a neurotic self-hating Jew, by definition. The assumption is that the policies of the state of Israel are perfect, so therefore any kind of criticism must be illegitimate. And that’s from Abba Eban, one of the most distinguished figures in Israel, the most westernised … praised, considered a dove.

Voniati: How do you comment on the Davos incident concerning Erdogan’s verbal attack against Peres?

Chomsky: It was impolite. You are not supposed to behave like that at Davos. But the idea that Peres was given 25 minutes to justify major atrocities and aggression, that’s what’s shocking. Why have that at Davos? I mean, do you allow Saddam Husein in such a gathering to justify the invasion of Kuwait? So Erdogan reacted, in my view, not in accord with the gentile atmosphere of the collection of the people who but basically appropriate under the circumstances.

Voniati: Have you, by any chance, been informed about the Cypriot-flagged vessel “Monchegorsk” that is docked in Limassol and seems to have been carrying weapons to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip? Israel and the United States requested that the vessel be stopped…

Chomsky: I don’t know about the Iranian vessel but I do know that right in the middle of the Gaza attack, Dignity was blocked in international waters and attacked by the Israeli navy and almost sunk. Now, that’s a major crime. That’s much worse than piracy off the coast of Somalia for example. If the Iranian vessel was stopped in international waters, that’s completely illegitimate. Israel has no authority to do anything in international waters. And the talk about not sending arms to Gaza …I mean, do they stop sending arms to Israel? I mean right in the middle of the Gaza war, the pentagon announced that it was sending a huge shipman of armaments to Israel. Did anybody stop that? They should say that those armaments are not intended for use by the Israeli army. The pentagon also announced that they are being prepositioned, that is, that they re being placed in Israel for the use of the US army In other words what they re saying is –and it’s been true for a long time- is that the US regards Israel as an offshore military base of its own, which they can use for their aggressive acts throughout the region.

Christiana Voniati is head of International News Department POLITIS Newspaper, Nicosia, Cyprus.
E-mail: christiana.voniati@politis-news.com
Blogspot: http://www.voniati.blogspot.com

Also mirrored at:  Information Clearing House

Related Links:

• Chomsky: Obama OKed Israel’s Gaza war

• The Day Israeli War Crimes Became Too Obvious!
• Part 2. Time We Elected an Independent Candidate for President?
• The Presidential Trojan Horse

Israeli Tank Fire Kills Three Sisters and a Cousin

Israel: Murder of four teenage girls was “reasonable”

Israeli tanks fired two shells into a Palestinian doctor’s house in Gaza killing three of his daughters—aged 13 to 19—and his niece, 17, wounding another daughter.

Israel continues to exercise its right to murder Palestinian children as the ‘Pirates of Davos’ applaud.

“Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Gazan and a doctor who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.” A report said.

The devastated Palestinian father said: “I hope that my children will be the last price.”

The Israeli military called the coldblooded murder “reasonable.”

Related Links:

• Israeli tank fire ‘killed doctor’s daughters’
• Israel shelled Gaza doctor’s home

Turkish PM Shouts at Israeli Chief Terrorist

“I find it very sad that people applaud what you have said because many people have been killed”

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of an angry debate on the Gaza war with Israel’s President and Chief Terrorist Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (L) leaves a debate with Israeli Chief Terrorist and President Shimon Peres. Photo: AFP. Image may be subject to copyright.

Erdogan complained that his comments on the conflict were cut short and walked off the stage in front of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other panel members.

“I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak,” the prime minister shouted as he left, though he said later he could reconsider.

Erdogan criticized the audience of international officials and corporate chiefs for applauding Peres’s emotional defense of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and nearly 6,000 others injured.

“I find it very sad that people applaud what you have said because many people have been killed,” he shouted at Peres.

Related News Links:

• Turkish PM storms out of heated Mideast debate
• Turkish prime minister storms out of Gaza debate

GAZA Killing Fields: Images of a New Millennium

The ZIONATZI Israelis doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to some of their  grandparents by NAZI Germany 70 years ago …

But why to the Palestinians?

More of these horrific photos are posted at Norman G. Finklestein website.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” Obama said while visiting Israel. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

What if you and your two daughters lived on the ‘wrong’ side of the border? Wouldn’t you still do everything in your power to stop that?

A Moral Dilemma for Obama: If President Obama believes the Israelis have a right to massacre Palestinians for any reason whatever, does it NOT follow that he would have also approved of Nazi atrocities against the Jews had he been around during WWII?

Israeli Massacre in Gaza: The Worst in 60 Years

Murdered, Persecuted, Driven out of their Homes and Exiled for 60 years by a bunch of foreign assassins who have forcefully invaded the Palestinian Homeland!

Israelis Murder 400 Palestinians, Injuring More Than Two Thousands in 4 Days of Air Attacks

Israeli air strikes in Gaza continued for a third day on Monday, killing more than 300 Palestinians and injuring another 700 in what has been described as one of  “the bloodiest massacres of Palestinians in 60 years by the Jewish state.”

An explosion is seen after a missile fired from an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter plane landed in the northern Gaza Strip December 27, 2008. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis. Image may be subject to copyright.

A Planned  Genocide

Late Sunday, Israeli warplanes targeted the local Islamic University killing a dozen students.  At least seven of the dead were students at a UN vocational college for Palestinian refugees. More than 20 students were injured in the air attack.

Israeli government reportedly approved the call-up of 6,500 reservists . “Israel will continue until we have a new security environment in the south, when the population there will no longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages,” a govt spokesman said.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli  planes bombed supply tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip used by Palestinians to smuggle food, water and medicine, past the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip.

Israeli Blockade

The Israeli blockade was imposed after the Hamas movement took control of Gaza in June 2007. The territory has been closed to virtually all supplies including food, water, fuel and medicine. The Palestinians in Gaza Strip territory have had to deal with food and water shortages shortages as well as power cuts.  The essential utilities have been crippled.

In January 2008, Israeli supreme court [a court which has no legitimacy as it operates in territories occupied by foreign forces] said that Gaza was ruled by “a murderous terror group”, but stated Israel still had an obligation under international law to avoid “deliberately” harming Palestinian civilians.

The court also had the audacity to rule that the reduction in fuel and electricity provided to the Gaza Strip was “sufficient to answer the vital humanitarian needs of the strip for the time being.”

Day Four of Gaza Massacre (Round 2008)

Israelis planes have now bombed the life out of about 400 people, injuring up to 2,000 Palestinians held in the Gaza Strip Concentration Camp. Meanwhile a Gibraltar-register boat, Dignity, carrying medical supplies and other humanitarian aid, foreign doctors and surgeons on its way to Gaza was rammed by a an Israeli patrol boat in international waters. See video and phone report.

Relatives mourn three young brothers who were killed in an Israeli airstrike Monday (December 29, 2008)  in Gaza. Image may be subject to copyright.

Gaza Strip: The World’s Largest Concentration Camp

Gaza Strip is a coastal strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Egypt on the south-west and Israel on the north and east. It is about 41 kilometers long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers  wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers, which makes it the world’s largest concentration camp. The area is not recognized internationally as part of any sovereign country but is claimed by the Palestinian National Authority as part of the Palestinian territories. Since the June 2007 battle of Gaza, actual control of the area is in the hands of the Hamas de facto government.

It has about 1.48 million Palestinian Arab (or Gazan) residents, that is a population density of about 4,118 people per square kilometer [before the ongoing massacre.]

Related Links:

• Zionism: 115 Years of Conspiracy Against the World

The Promised Land?

Obama, Emanuel and Israel

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

(Counterpunch) In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after “a Lehi combatant who was killed” — i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled “Don’t pin much hope on Obama — Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message”. This editorial referred to the Irgun as a “terror organization” (a judgment call) and concluded: “Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (left) is declaring his support for Sen. Barack Obama after months of remaining neutral. Now that Emanuel is unleashed, he can help shore up support for Obama in the Jewish community. (Image AP/Chicago Sun-Times). Image may be subject to copyright.

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning“, and America’s electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president’s declaring his country’s independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world’s billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president’s eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts — not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.
The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America’s unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and “national security” problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the earliest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming — the naming as “Special Envoy for Middle East Peace” of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off “think tank”, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Nevertheless, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been “waiting for Godot” — waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new “only game in town”.

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Bibi Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian “state” (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a “two-state solution” somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, nonracist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually cleansing it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president — least of all Barack Obama — could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual “peace process” as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more “facts on the ground”) forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.) Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist “rainbow nation”.

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as “senior citizens” will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a “Mandela Moment” or an “Obama Moment”, restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck”. Copyright author/Counterpunch. See Fair Use Notice.

Related Links:

• The Presidential Trojan Horse
• Quote of the Week: Doing the Nominating

Palestinian farms dry up, Jewish settlers lawns grow greener

Illegal Jewish settlers receive 5 time more water than Palestinians

As Palestinian farms dry up, the lawns on lands occupied by illegal Jewish settlers grow greener. Scant rainfall this year has hit the entire area hard. However, Palestinians are hit hardest because Israel controls the water including West Bank’s three main aquifers.

Palestinians get only about 20 percent of the water they need for irrigation. Israel controls about 50 West Bank wells and directs the entire capacity of about 50 million mainly to Jewish settlements.

An Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, recently reported that Israeli households consumed about 3.5 times more water than Palestinian households.

In reality, the figure is probably closer to 5 to 1, against palestinians.

“A recent U.N. report found that Palestinians in some of the hardest-hit communities were spending as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of their income on water delivered by truck. The Israeli Water Authority did not return several calls from Reuters to request similar information about Israeli consumers.“

War With Russia Is On The Agenda

By Paul Craig Roberts

26/08/08 “ICH” — Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering.  The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark—indeed brainwashed—about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.

The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The documentary is available here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm

Public Domain Photo: USAF/Dept of Defense. The Orwellian named
MGM-118A “Peacekeeper nuclear missile”

As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America’s veto in the United Nations.  Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.

If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.

Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded.  Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a congressional investigation.

Torpedo damage to Liberty’s research compartment (Starboard side).

Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet “president” of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.

This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime.  In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein.  But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.

Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big Brother.  They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them.  What is wrong with Americans?  Why do they put up with it?  Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are?  Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy” and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.

Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war.  But every one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia.  In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia’s borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO.  In an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders.

The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict.  The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.

A Minuteman III ICBM test launch from Vandenberg AFB, California, United States.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century.  The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.

The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed.  The Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most

ignorant warmongers alive.  The Democrats’ choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name.  Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.

Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black.  Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label?  If America’s population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?

Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.

The real issues are suffocated by the media.  The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad.  Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.

Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.

Trident missile launch at sea from a UK submarine. Source: Wikimedia Commons

But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggressors.”  Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win.  So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on killing.

I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam.  When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.”

What would America have won?  The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.

For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory.  Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media” and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won’t happen again.  These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.

Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war.  Obama has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as McCain.  Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole’s animosity toward Russia.  The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.

Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby.  There is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on “the issues” by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.

Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge.  They have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university professorships, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by the President of France and the US Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of US economic policy.”

Related Links:

• Giga Trends
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• The Attack on USS Liberty

Urge “every Negro to stay off the buses Monday!”

Rosa Parks, Hail to Thee!

by Ralph Nader
July 30, 2008

Rosa Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background.

Montgomery, Alabama – The Troy University Rosa Parks Museum is located on the side of the old Empire Theatre where this courageous African-American woman declined to “move to the back of the bus” in 1955.

A visit to the museum honoring her and other civil rights champions is a sobering reminder of just how courageous such a refusal was in that very segregated South. Mrs. Parks was promptly arrested and thus was launched the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is credited with igniting the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.

What most people do not know about Rosa Parks is that she was a trained civil rights worker who knew the significance of staying in her front seat and not giving it up to a white man. But she could not have predicted what happened after the police took her away.

Four days after she was arrested, the bus boycott started on December 5, 1955. A flyer distributed on that date by the Women’s Political Council of Montgomery noted the arrest of Mrs. Parks and two teenage “Negro” women—Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith—who earlier that year were arrested and fined for refusing to give up their seats.

The flyer went on to urge “every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday.” They stayed off in the thousands.

Since three-fourths of the Montgomery bus riders were “Negroes,” the growing boycott grew to become a serious economic drain on the bus company. As it grew, and as the accompanying street marches and demonstrations started, the national news media began to cover it and a young charismatic minister by the name of Martin Luther King.

Sam Cook was at the Museum during our visit. He had a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings and photographs from those heady days when he occasionally was a driver for Rev. King.

In addition to the Museum’s timelines of history, artifacts, documents and memorabilia—there is a replica of the public bus on which Mrs. Parks was sitting—there are classrooms and a library to enhance the serious educational purposes for today that the Museum’s staff espouses.

The new Children’s Wing conveys to youngsters that “things just don’t happen in history—people make things happen. Visitors come to realize that they, too, can make a difference just as Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Joanne Robinson, Fred Gray, Claudette Colvin, Georgia Gilmore and many others made a difference following in the footsteps of Dred Scott, Harriet Tubman, Homer Plessy and others who had gone before.”

Students today in Montgomery and other southern cities might wonder what all the fuss was about from white folk. The races mix easily in this city on buses, in stores, restaurants, cinemas, schools, hospitals and ballparks. Race, like class, still matters a great deal throughout the United States; but there has been undeniable progress.

The contemporary struggles for justice can learn from the ways the civil rights movement overcame a media boycott and moved hitherto immovable forces.

To be sure, it used the courts, and the streets with non-violent demonstrations. But never underestimate the personal story of an individual who heroically and selflessly takes on the Machine to spark the requisite rage and empathy that leads to larger and larger numbers of similarly situated people who swell the ranks of those demanding change or reform.

So powerful a model is this civil rights approach that when Mubarek Awad, a Palestinian-American youth counselor in Palestine’s West Bank tried to organize nonviolent civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation and repression, the Israeli government deported him in 1988 back to the United States. He proceeded to establish the group, Non-violence International, but he is still banned from Israel.

Commercial or labor strikes as a form of political protest received the ire of the Israelis. They would routinely break up strikes by cutting the locks on closed shops or welding doors shut and fining the shop owners.

In our country, we need the Rosa Parks of rebellion against gas and drug prices, home foreclosures, cruel prison conditions, huge up-front payments before entering hospitals, junk, obesity-illness-producing food, and breakdowns in municipal services.

Each historic, citizen-moving movement has its own style and personality. Granted, the mass media can be very picky indeed, as it has been with the soldiers who have refused to return to the unconstitutional, illegal war-occupation in Iraq. The heartfelt stories of these soldiers told at a recent “Winter Soldiers” gathering were not even covered by the New York Times or the television evening news. (But Amy Goodman did on Democracy Now!)

One must believe there is always a way to produce the human spark for a broader public morality and a deeper commitment to a more just society.

Rosa Parks, hail to thee!

END

Part 2. Time We Elected an Independent Candidate for President?

submitted by a reader

Must Israeli Politicians Bewail at Pearl Harbor Memorial Before they are Allowed to Become Prime Minister?

The Righteous Gentile?

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack [To-Save-One-Life-is-to-Save-a-World] Obama lays a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, July 23, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Young. Image may be subject to copyright. See RTSF Fair Use Notice!

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It’s 4th of July!

Original Entry:

It’s the Independence Day again and what have we done?

Prosecute George W. Bush for Mass Murder!

Our special thanks to Ken for bringing this book to our attention:

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

A book by Vincent Bugliosi

Excerpts

The Legal Framework for the Prosecution

With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I’ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for “the little guy”), my political orientation is not rigid. More

Palpable Anger

My anger over the war in Iraq, some will say, is palpable in the pages of this book. If I sound too angry for some, what should I be greatly angry about — that a referee gave what I thought was a bad call to my hometown football, basketball, or baseball team, and it may have cost them the game? I don’t think so. More

Bush’s Reaction to War

How has George Bush reacted to the hell he created in Iraq, to the thousands of lives that have been lost in the war, and to the enormous and endless suffering that the survivors of the victims — their loved ones — have had to endure? More

Bugliosi v. Bush

With the literally hundreds of prosecutors out there and the powerful evidence of guilt I’ve set out, it’s hard to believe there’s not at least one prosecutor, maybe more, courageous enough to say this is America, and in America no man is above the law. More

Related Links:

• “SOMEONE HAS TO PAY” (Video)
• Iraq: That Expensive Hellhole of Genocide

tes

Mass Murder in Gaza Strip Continues

At least 20 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian fatalities included at least five children and a Reuters cameraman. Three Israel soldiers were also killed.

Reuters said that their cameramen, Fadel Shana, was killed by a direct hit from an Israeli tank shell. the Footage from Shana’s camera showed an Israeli tank firing a shell in his direction, before the image went blank.
territories
Reuters report concerning the cause of Shana’s death was confirmed by an autopsy which determined Shana suffered fatal injuries consistent with the darts scattered by “flechette” tank shells from an Israeli tank.