3 NEW HONDURATOONS ~~ ¡HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

Honduran coup leaders are popularly known as “gorillas” and Roberto Micheletti as “Goriletti”

Images ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff


WE ARE ANGRY ~~ A POEM FOR PALESTINE

hungry_angry

We are angry

By Mazin Qumsiyeh


We are angry at rhetoric of oppression
Hafrada-Segregation-Apartheid and Security
Two-states, one state, cantons and autonomy
The chosen state’s right to exist

While colonialism can persist
Addictws now to talk about talking
And hold meetings about more meetings

Maybe to revive the “peace process” charades

to ensure no peace for a few more decades

giving the monster created by Western powers

time to gobble more of the holy pieces

and belch its pleasure in more negotiations

devoid of human rights or UN resolutions

We are angry at statistics of oppression
11,000 political prisoners
534 Destroyed villages and towns
35% seeking stolen jobs
450 km of apartheid walls
7 million displaced or refugees

1.5 million uprooted fruiting trees

1.5 million in Gaza besieged
62 years of justice denied

We are angry at manufactured misery
Epidemics and pandemics
Genocides hidden with polemics

Swelling ranks of the disempowered

Phosphorous bombs on Gaza showered

An apartheid wall that snakes around

Running sewage in the streets abound

Children barefoot in a refugee camp in 2009!
While the unelected leaders repeat the same line


We are angry at spies
Some come take pictures and pretend to care

Others just watch and hope to avoid the glare
Some punished by law or by a guilty conscience

Others abandoned by their racist masters
Some feed stomachs but starve their souls

Others fall for carnal desires as fleeting as the empty goals
Some serving the colonial racist regime

Others think it safer with the quisling theme
Some commit suicide or die forgotten
Others repent and are soon forgiven


We are angry at hypocrisy
Those who claim then need their human right

While not sparing children from their plight

Those who champion International laws

While leaving heavy trails of bloody claws
Those who smile plunging knives in your back
While screaming loudly that they are under attack

Those who use a religious heritage to support overt racism

While defaming anyone who dares to speak out: “anti-semitism”!


We are angry at collaborators
Those with nice suits and those with guns
Those who sell their people for shekels
Those who do it out of ignorance

And those who with malice and malfeasance

Presidents, Pundits, and peasants

Large or small petty criminals


We are angry at being angry
While it may help us break the chains
Yet our love through anger diminishes

And our faith in humanity shrinks

And even what we want for ourselves

So maybe this final anger motivates ….

To shed anger and keep high our heads and spirits
In our world there are many who deserve merits
good, honest, brave activists
Philanthropists, protestors, poets…

men and women of all life stages

tailor-made therapists for all ages
Political Prisoners and Martyrs

Intellectuals and small farmers

Working to plant the blood-soaked lands

With cactus, figs, olive trees, and  almonds

watering hopes and dreams like a growing grape vine

tendrils reaching out to free beloved immortal Palestine

YOU DON’T MAKE PEACE WITH HALF A PEOPLE

 

 

Obama, you won’t make peace without talking to Hamas
By Gideon Levy

It’s as if U.S. President Barack Obama did the least he had to. He “rebuked” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. That’s not how a president with star power acts. That is not how a superpower does things. America is again falling down on the job, and Obama is betraying his mission and the promise of his presidency.True, it’s an anomaly that the United States wants a peace settlement more than the hawkish parties to the conflict, but the leader of the free world has a crucial role, and iheis not fulfilling it. Nine months after Obama assumed the presidency, precious time has been totally wasted, in the Middle East at least, and suspicions are growing that the promise of his presidency is on the wane, even if the man is attractive and uproariously funny on David Letterman. Laugh, laugh, but ultimately, where are the results?

Beautiful speeches like the one last night at the UN General Assembly are no longer enough. Being America means enjoying numerous international privileges, but also involves a few obligations. One of them is to look after world peace. Just as it set off for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of global goals, however dubious, and just as it is working to prevent a nuclear Iran, America is also obligated to act to settle the Middle East conflict. That is not its right but its obligation. Locals don’t want its services in either Iraq or Afghanistan, but America is shedding its own blood there nonetheless. Why? Because it believes this is essential to world security.

When he was elected, President Obama declared that the Middle East conflict was endangering world peace. Nothing is more true. The potential danger between Jenin, Gaza and Jerusalem is no less serious than that in the killing fields of Kandahar and Mosul. But what is the president doing to eliminate the fuel that feeds international terrorism? Or at least to show that he is doing something? He ruins nine whole months over the issue of a construction freeze in the settlements, and even that pathetic goal was not achieved.

It has to be one way or the other: Either Obama thinks a solution to the conflict isn’t a worthy goal and so should get out of the picture and devote his energies elsewhere or he means what he said and must use all his power and act. Meanwhile, instead of change, we have gotten distressing continuity. Instead of “yes we can,” we have gotten “no we can’t.”

Obama needs to turn things upside-down and break with convention. That’s why he was elected. Two decisive steps would change things completely: an American effort to introduce Hamas into the negotiations and pressure on Israel to end the matter of the occupation. Simplistic? Perhaps, but the complex and gradual solutions haven’t gotten us anywhere up to now. Like it or not, without Hamas peace is not possible. The fact that Obama has put his trust only in Abbas’ Fatah has guaranteed failure, which was foreseeable. History has taught us that you make peace with your worst enemy, not with those who are seen as collaborators by their own people.

You also don’t make peace with half a people, in half of the territory. Obama didn’t even try to break this unnecessary spell and automatically went, unbelievably, down the path of his predecessor, George W. Bush. The president who was willing to engage North Korea and Iran and dares Venezuela and Cuba didn’t even think about entering negotiations with Hamas. Why is it okay to talk to Iran but not to Hamas? Obama, too, thinks Hamas is fit for negotiations only over the fate of a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, but not over the fate of two peoples.

The second step, which is no less essential, is applying pressure on Israel. Given Israel’s total dependence and in the face of its blindness to the price of the occupation, Obama’s friendship with Israel is actually to be judged by the steps he would seemingly take against Israel. As Israel’s isolation in the world only grows, and the danger of Iran threatens the country, Israel’s best friend must pressure its ally and save it from itself. Instead, we got another condemnation of the Goldstone Commission report, this time from the new American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who had held the promise of major change.

It’s not too late. True, the initial momentum has been lost, but now, following this week’s “summit of rebukes,” America must hurry up and rebuke itself and mainly ponder how to get out of the booby trap to which it has succumbed. Now, too, only America can (and must) do it.


Source

MID-EAST ‘SUMMIT’ ~~ NEW YORK’S HOTTEST GAME SHOW

This article was written a few hours before the New York meeting

Another farcical show

By Khalid Amayreh

One doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict the outcome, or more correctly failure, of the three-way meeting between President Obama, the Israeli premier  Benyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, which is to take place later today in New York.

The meeting comes on the heels of two important events: First the nearly total failure of Obama’s personal Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to convince the extremist Israeli leadership to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Mitchell met numerous times with Israeli officials in the hope of convincing them to walk in the path of peace. However, instead of listening to Mitchell, who represents the President of Israel’s guardian-ally, Israeli leaders chose to announce fresh settlement expansion plans every time the American diplomat arrived in Jerusalem.

Moreover, the numerous promises made to Mitchell with regard to a settlement freeze, even including the pledged dismantling of so-called illegal outposts, have all failed to materialize.

Hence, one can assume that the New York meeting is actually a timely recognition by the  Obama administration of the utter failure of  Mitchell’s shuttle diplomacy.

Second, the three-way encounter comes a week after the publication of the Goldstone’s Commission report which asserted that Israel knowingly and deliberately committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the December-January blitz against the Gaza Strip.

Needless to say, during the Nazi-like onslaught, the Israeli army, or Jewish Wehrmacht, murdered, maimed and incinerated thousands of innocent Palestinians. In addition, thousands of buildings, mostly civilian infrastructure such as homes, mosques and schools were utterly bombed and destroyed.

This is not Arab propaganda. Any human being can travel to Gaza and see for himself or herself the huge magnitude of the shocking holocaust.

For those who can’t travel to the  besieged coastal territory, they can have access to “Google Earth” and see for themselves. The important thing is not to succumb to the Zionist hasbara machine. These people lie as often as they breathe, to put it mildly.

It is therefore shameful and immoral for the  American President, who had promised ad nauseam that decency and dignity would loom large in his administration,  to invite and welcome the leader of a criminal entity  whose modus operandi continues to consist of murder, lie and land theft.

This really forces many to pose the following question: What would it take to get the Obama administration to adopt an meaningful  stand against Israeli expansionism, racism and bellicosity?

Obama is not a stupid man. He must be fully aware of the twisted modes of Israeli thinking. Even a brief argument with an Israeli leader or diplomat would reveal the striking morbidity of the Zionist mentality.

This is why it is hard  to fathom how an intelligent man continues to believe that the fudge-and-compromise approach would still be working with such racist-minded Zionists who think that the entire universe was created for the sake of the Jew.

My prediction of the New York encounter’s failure is not a matter of  soothsaying.  It is rather a careful reading into  consistent Israeli political behavior since time immemorial. To put it simply, Israel will not give up the spoils of the 1967 war, unless it is forced to. Israel will not give up the bulk of Occupied East Jerusalem unless it is forced to. Israel will not allow the thoroughly-savaged refugees to be repatriated to their former homes and villages unless it is forced to. Finally, Israel will not remove these children of rape, otherwise known as “settlements” unless it is forced to.

In light, it is perfectly legitimate to wonder if the US which has been utterly unable to get Israel to stop the construction  of even a few settler buildings in East Jerusalem, or even in the rest of the West Bank, would ever be able to compel the Zionist regime  to undo the entire Zionist project.

This is why one must always be cautious and realistic when appraising the inherently oblique American-Israeli-Palestinian axel. In particular, one must resist the temptation of thinking that the US is the dominant player in this scandalous  tripartite game of conspiracy,  bullying,  betrayal, domination, and  compulsion.

President Obama might be tempted to view with favor misleading Zionist arguments that the Palestinians would have to compromise and give concessions just as Israel is demanded to give concessions.

But this argument is inherently mendacious and unfair. After all, Israel has been devouring rather gluttonously the contested piece of cheese for many decades, so much so that very little of it has been left anyway.

Hence, the question that imposes itself on the conscience of conscientious men and women around the world, people who value honesty and justice, is whether it is fair and just to divide the remaining little of the proverbial cheese between Israel and the savaged Palestinians.

In 1948, Zionist Jews usurped our country, committed hideous massacres, destroyed our homes and villages before deporting the majority of  native Palestinians  to the four corners of the globe.

The Nakba was our national catastrophe and in a certain sense was our holocaust as well. The harsh impact of this cardinal  disaster remained relevant today as it was more than 60 years ago.

However, instead of seeking genuine reconciliation with the Palestinians, if only by recognizing their basic human rights, successive Israeli leaderships constantly sought to consummate Zionism by trying to effect our national annihilation.

Didn’t the infamous Gold Meir claim that the Palestinians didn’t exist? Don’t the shipyard dogs of Zionism continue to this day  to argue that a Palestinian state never existed  as if people not confined into a  nation-state structure didn’t have the right live on their respective homelands?

As to the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, it is crystal clear he is not the best person to lead his people and represent their enduring aspirations for freedom of Justice. He is not an eloquent tongue that would fearlessly defend  our people’s cause  nor is he a tough and  principled leader who wouldn’t budge under pressure.

Moreover, Abbas stands  at the helm of an entity whose very survival depends to a large extent on the “good will” and politically-motivated charity provided by western countries and their Arab puppet regimes.

This is why it is extremely important that the Palestinian people must closely monitor Abbas’s behavior in the coming weeks and months. I am saying this because in the absence of a clarion, determined   and collective “NO” to any prospective concessions by the PLO leadership, especially with regard to our national constants,  Netanyahu and his criminal comrades could have their way of imposing de facto capitulation on an un-sovereign  leadership that is more concerned about defeating  Hamas than ending the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of our country.

In the final analysis, People whose aspirations don’t go beyond owning a smart car and having a hefty salary at the end of the month can’t be entrusted to be honest representatives of the Palestinian people.

And a final word to the new Fatah leadership. You repeatedly described yourselves as the new patriotic leadership of the Palestinian people. We listened to you with indifferent silence because we didn’t believe  a word of what you were saying.

Now it is your turn to prove us wrong.

USING GAY PORN TO SAVE ISRAEL’S ‘IMAGE’

ISRAEL’S NEWEST STIMULUS PLAN…..

HYPOCRISY at its newest and highest level! KILL, KILL, KILL….. and then create an image of ‘Make love not war’…..

Last year one of Israel’s military magazines featured porno shots of female soldiers to encourage tourism….

SEX SELLS!!

The latest ‘campaign’ is aimed at the international gay community. Forgetting that Israel treats its gays as second class citizens, that they are brutally attacked constantly by extreme right wingers and religious zealots, the ‘campaign’ wants gay tourism to ‘save its image’. WHAT IMAGE????? A murderous nation that has convinced the world that everything is OK here…. Well…. IT’S NOT! Was it also forgotten that just a month ago one of Israels gay community centres was the scene of a shootout?

BUT…… busine$$ is busine$$…. and obviously porn is a good one.Whether or not the ‘campaign’ is successful or not, the film ‘Men of Israel’ will surely be a moneymaker…. that’s all that really counts, right? The film won’t be showing the wall of apartheid or Israeli men taking aim at Palestinian children. It won’t be showing images from the recent war in Gaza or the Palestinians living on the streets of Jerusalem… after being illegally evicted from their homes by Israeli men. No…. it will show the viewers a false image of a love that just does not exist in Israel.

Read an excerpt from the Pornographic Stimulus Plan

By Michael Kaminer

“It’s free PR for Israel, and it’s much better than the PR they’re getting on the news,” he said during a tour of the company’s expansive second-floor offices, with views of the New York Times building across the street. “The reality is that Israel has only one face to people on the street, and that’s the West Bank and Gaza. All people see in the media is a country of disaster. They get images of a blown-up bus.”

By contrast, Lucas said, the images in “Men of Israel” — filmed in telegenic Tel Aviv, Haifa and desert locations by Israeli fashion photographer Ronen Akerman — amount to a pornographic stimulus campaign for gay tourism.

“Nobody goes to Israel for Golda Meir, I’m so sorry,” Lucas said in heavily Russian-accented English. “People don’t care that you have a great orchestra, and they’re not particularly interested in the Holocaust museum. Gay people, and straight people, want beautiful beaches, beautiful nature, beautiful men and women, good food, good hotels. Israel shouldn’t be mistaken about why people go there. They need me.” Neither the Israeli Consulate nor the Israel Ministry of Tourism office in New York returned calls or e-mails for comment.


Read the full report HERE


Perhaps the next film can be called ‘ISRAEL’S UGLY MEN’…… sights that could possibly get a gay man to ‘switch teams’ 😉

Starring…..

Herr’ Kahana

‘Herr’ Lieberman
‘Herr’ Marzel
‘Herr’ Settlers

WEDNESDAY’S HONDURATOON ~~ LEADER OF THE COUP

Honduran coup leader Roberto Micheletti

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
Click on image to enlarge


Read THIS related article

SPECIAL DOUBLE FEATURE HATE VIDEOS ~~~ A MUST SEE FOR EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER

Clayton Swisher, working for Al Jazeera in Jerusalem, filed a new report on Israeli opinions of Obama yesterday. It is wonderful to see the model that Max Blumenthal and I recently began using to explain the Israeli mindset make it into mainstream press outlets. I hope to see more videos like this from Clayton during his stay.


Barack Obama, the US president, is getting ready to host Israeli and Palestinian leaders for a meeting he hopes might get peace talks started again. But Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has made his position clear, saying he will defend settlement expansion, which is the big sticking point. Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher has been out on the streets of Jerusalem to find out what Israelis think about Obama and his plans.

Below is a video about settlement opinion on the same streets as the one above. I made it with Antony Loewenstein and David Jacobus this past July.

With all the current rhetoric out of Washington regarding an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, we wanted to gauge public opinion on the streets of Jerusalem on a sunny, Sunday afternoon last weekend. What we found was shocking but unsurprising. By Joseph Dana (www.josephdana.com) and Antony Loewenstein (www.antonyloewenstein.com).

Source

TUESDAY’S TOON ~~ VIVA HONDURAS

In a dramatic move that seemed like something out of a Hollywood
movie, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into his
country and turned up Monday at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa,
the capital. (Source: Pakistan News)

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
click on image to enlarge


Also see THIS post

FACEBOOK STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF A BORDER DISPUTE

mark zuckerberg

Will Facebook follow in the footsteps of Google and succumb to every desire of the zionists, or will it continue to be the independent Website that it professes to be? Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the site might be facing his greatest challenge for backing the decision to allow users living in the Golan Heights to chose their country of origin…. Israel or Syria.

Hopefully they will stick to their guns and not be coerced by zionist bullies on the Web. It was a victory for groups such as Honest Reporting. Com to get Israel as an option for those living in the ‘Heights’…. but the question remains, how long will Syria remain as the other option? An earlier ‘victory’ for the zionists was to allow the illegal settlers in the Occupied West Bank to identify Israel as their country, rather than Palestine where they actually live.

A report on the Golan Heights decision follows…..

Facebook gets caught in Golan Heights dispute

By Paula Hancocks

Logging onto Facebook as a resident in the Golan Heights, should you enter Syria or Israel as your home country?

Facebook now has 300 million users -- almost as many as the population of the United States.

Facebook now has 300 million users — almost as many as the population of the United States.

Decades of war and occupation have not provided an answer to that question — but the social networking Web site now permits both options, sparking fears about an anti-Facebook cyber-war.

The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then it has been internationally classified as Israeli-occupied territory.

Up until recently, Facebook fans in the Golan Heights could only choose Syria as their country of origin or else leave it blank. Pro-Israel Web site honestreporting.com sought to change that, starting a group called “Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria.”

Alex Margolin says the campaign was never political. “It was never a question of the future of Golan… it’s totally possible that at some time in the future the Golan will change hands and go to Syria.”

The group welcomed 2,500 members in the first week. Shortly afterwards Facebook policy changed. Do you think Facebook was right to change policy?

“We have enabled users in Golan Heights to choose either Syria or Israel in the listings,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. “We currently have the same dual-listing options for the West Bank settlement, which is listed in both Palestine and Israel.

“We deal with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis, and with Golan Heights we decided a dual listing made sense in this instance.”

Eighteen-year old Ofri Bazaz is delighted she can finally change her profile to Israel, squealing with delight as she tries it for the first time. She said: “It’s very important on the Internet when somebody comes to my profile on Facebook they will see Israel and not Syria. I’m not Syrian.”

But a 20-minute drive away in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, the reaction is very different. Facebook users here consider themselves Syrian and refuse to accept the change, as they fear it undermines their peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Shopkeeper Sakar abu Sabit said: “Even if it’s just on the computer, I want people to always recognize me in the Golan Heights as a Syrian citizen.”

Reaction from Syria is likely to be muted according to Syrian scholar, Ammar Abdulhamid. He told CNN that Facebook and other social networking sites have already been banned in Syria. “The Syrian government has really taken a strong stance on Internet activism and social networking sites,” he said.

The real reason is nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, it’s because these sites are very popular with Syrian activists.”

But with 300 million users worldwide and an estimated 120 million logging in every single day according to Facebook, there will inevitably be fears about a backlash against the site that now finds itself at the center of a 40-year-old conflict.

Source

MONDAY’S OBAMATOON ~~ THE BIG FOOL SAYS ‘TO PUSH ON IN VIETGHANISTAN’

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

Click on image to enlarge

Originally produced for The Sovereign

Aired on CBS at the height of the Vietnam War, this song holds just as much truth today…

It was back in 1941.
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in Lou’siana one night
By the light of the moon.
The Captain told us to ford a river.
That’s how it all begun.
We were knee deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure
This is the best way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, go on, I’ve forded this river
About a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy, but just keep sloggin’.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, “Sir, with all this equipment,
No man will be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nelly,”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination.
Men, follow me. I’ll lead on.”
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once the moon clouded over.
We heard a gurglin’ cry.
A few seconds later the Captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around, men.
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the Captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Then the place he’d once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
About a half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Now I’m not going to point any moral —
I’ll leave that for yourself.
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking,
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers, that old feeling comes on,
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep, neck deep,
Soon even a tall man will be over his head.
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.

ISRAEL’S ‘OTHER’ OCCUPATION

The Israeli Occupation of America: How Israel Gained Control of American Foreign Policy

By Hesham Tillawi *

usa_israel “Israel need not apologize for the assassination or destruction of those who seek to destroy it. The first order of business for any country is the protection of its people.”(Washington Jewish Week, October 9, 1997.)

I came from a country occupied militarily by Israel to the land of “the free and the brave” only to find out it too was occupied politically by Israel.

The Palestinian people, holding on to whatever shred of hope they can, are counting on the day Americans see the error of their ways and change their opinion of the whole Middle East situation and understand it for what it truly is-A conquered, oppressed people living a hellish existence under a maniacal, occupying power and who will then contact their representatives in Congress and have them put the heat on Israel in fulfilling the agreements she made years ago with the PLO such as Oslo, Taba, Camp David, Wye River, the Road Map, or even Annapolis.

The sad fact however is that the Americans-as much as they champion themselves as a “free people”-are in no better shape than the Palestinians. On the contrary, the American position is worse than that of the Palestinians. The Palestinians can identify the enemy-he is the one with the gun and blowing away their loved ones. They KNOW they are occupied and oppressed. They KNOW how Israel occupied Palestine, killed its inhabitants and forced the majority of those who survived the carnage out of their homes and lands to then live as strangers in refugee camps.

The Americans however, have no idea. Like a drug addict who thinks he feels great after shooting up, he does not realize he is a slave, to his substance and to his pusher. The history of how the Zionists’ controlled England is not shrouded in mystery. Through Jewish control of the British government the Balfour Declaration was drafted that “gave” the land of Palestine to the Jews after WWI, a land they did not own or possess.

But how in the world did they occupy the United States politically? There is no real “Balfour Declaration” we can point to as proof.

Or can we?

Jewish influence in American politics-while there from the earliest days and certainly apparent during the Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman administrations-did not become the force it is today until the Kennedy era, or, rather, AFTER the Kennedy era.

As all know, in 1961 John Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States, a presidency cut short as a result of his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Robert Kennedy, the president’s younger brother was Attorney General of the United States and therefore the head of the Department of Justice.

What is little-known is that the Kennedy’s realized early on that indeed the country was in trouble and that something needed to be done about it. The trouble in this case was the influence slithering its way into American political life from a far-away state only about 12 years old known as Israel. Both Kennedy brothers, learning politics at their father Joseph’s knee, understood the dynamic of this thing known as “Jewish interests”, how it would play out and what the repercussions would be for America.

Of the many issues revolving around Israel and the Zionist question the two more important as pertains the Jewish state were (A) Israel’s nuclear program, and (B) the issue of an organization known as the American Zionist Council.

According to Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh, President Kennedy was profoundly committed to nuclear nonproliferation and was categorically opposed to nuclear weapons in the Middle East, which meant opposing Israel’s nuclear program. Hersh states that JFK exerted heavy pressure on Israel to stop the program and was serious about it. At the time Kennedy was in the middle of crises mode with the Russians in trying to arrange a nonproliferation treaty with them and therefore Israel’s nuclear program would be a big embarrassment. In addition to being an embarrassment it would open up the possibility of a nuclear conflict with Russia, given her allies in the Middle East, something made all the more believable in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis that almost resulted in a nuclear war between the two giants. John Kennedy had nightmares about the prospect of nuclear proliferation, saying “I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, 15 to 20…. I see the possibility in the 1970s of the president of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard this as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”

Secret letters and secret meetings between Kennedy and Ben-Gurion give a clear picture of the difficulty Kennedy faced in negotiating with the Israeli Prime Minister who stated many times that nothing will save Israel but nuclear power. According to author Michael Collins Piper in his book Final Judgment Ben Gurion wrote Kennedy saying: “Mr. President, my people have the right to exist, and this existence is in danger.”

It does not take a skilled translater to figure out what Ben Gurion was saying, namely that Kennedy’s opposition to nuclear weapons in the Middle East was seen as an existential threat to the Jewish people and their newly-formed state. Going further, Kennedy insisted on inspections of Israel’s program as evidenced in a secret letter sent to then-Israeli Prime Minister Levy Eshkol that stated that American support of Israel “could be jeopardized” if the Americans were not allowed to inspect the Israeli nuclear facilities.

As if the aforementioned were not enough, there was another front in this private war between Kennedy and the “Jewish state” equally important in its scope if we are to understand what kinds of forces were at play here that led to America’s change of policy with regards to Israel. It involves the issue of spying, bribery and the direct controlling of American politicians by a foreign power and the one creature at the center of all of it was something known as the American Zionist Council and the Kennedys’ insistence it register as a foreign agent under the provisos of FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act passed by Congress back in 1938 to prevent German agents in the U.S. from buying their way into the American system of government and public opinion. The purpose of FARA was “to insure that American public and its law makers know the source of information- propaganda intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws.”

In other words the Kennedy’s understood the danger of the Zionist Movement on the United States of America and treated it just like Germany was treated during the Hitler years. The Kennedy’s understood the reality of the situation as it existed during their days in government, that the AZC was an agent of a foreign government, Israel, which would prevent it from buying American politicians and exerting the kind of influence over public opinion making that for all intents and purposes is now is a fait accompli.

Negotiations went back and forth between the Department of Justice headed by the President’s brother Robert and the American Zionist Council. The council refused to register and the DOJ tried to exert pressure on them, even going so far in one instance as giving them 72 hours to register, but at no avail. Examining the newly-de-classified documents containing the minutes of those meetings between the DOJ and the AZC one can see the language of gangsters being used. In one of those documents dated May 2, 1963 the head legal counsel Simon H. Rifkind for the AZC explained to the representatives of the DOJ the nature of the AZC, saying “The council is composed of representatives of the various Zionist organizations in the United States” and thereby, in effect, it represented “the vast majority of organized Jewry within this country.” The message was clear here-As far as organizations go it is big and powerful. Judge Rifkind obviously wanted to make sure the Kennedy’s knew they were picking a fight with a gorilla and not some small mouse.

He did not stop there but went further by stating that the vast number of Jews who adhered to the principles of Zionism could not understand how “our administration” could “do such harm to the Zionist movement and impair the effectiveness of the council by insistence on registration.”

Here Judge Rifkind made sure he used the phrase “our administration” instead of “our government” to make a specific point, namely that he was talking about Kennedy personally, that it was the Jews responsible for him getting elected and that if he continued with his agenda he was in effect entering into a war with organized Jewry.

Another meeting very much worth noting was held on October 17, 1963 between DOJ and AZC. In this meeting Judge Rifkind insisted on non registering, citing that fact that “It was the opinion of most of the persons affiliated with the Council that such registration…would eventually destroy the Zionist movement” and adding that he did not believe his clients would “file any papers or sign any papers indicating that the organization was an agent of a foreign principal”. In other words, “Screw You America and your laws, we’ll do what we want” as well as threatening the administration and telling them who really ruled the country, not the Kennedy brothers but rather the persons “affiliated” with AZC. Once translated from Gangsterese into understandable political language, this statement was in effect a direct warning/threat to the Administration that the war was on. It is up for grabs whether or not the Kennedys understood this to be the real threat it was, but nevertheless the Administration decided to continue with its position.

On November 22, 1963 President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. As the AZC went away into the sunset, AIPAC came riding in, born and led by the same persons who created and managed AZC for the same purpose. This time however, the message went out clearly for all on Capitol Hill to hear and understand-“Do not stand in our way of influencing public opinion, policy, or laws.”

Obviously, the message has been effective, as all American leaders save a few such as James Traficant have done as instructed. According to the former Congressman, Israel receives $15 Billion worth of aid from the American Taxpayers without a single discussion or a single argument on the floor of either the house of Representatives or the Senate. Why? Because no one dares to question it. Why is it that most of our politicians make pilgrimage to Tel Aviv and the “wailing wall” in Jerusalem to get the blessing of Israel before they are even approved by their own political parties here in the United States? Why is it our Congress is always split down the middle on all other issues presented to them except when it deals with Israel? We all still remember the comment made by former Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon to his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in October 2001: “Don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America.” When people with eyes to see state that fact they are called anti-Semites, despite the fact that what is being said is the truth.

The “control” Sharon spoke about has been there for a long time now. Consider what the late Senator Fulbright (who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who held hearings back in 1963 regarding the AZC and the fact it should be registered as a Foreign Agent registration) said when speaking on the CBS television program “Face the Nation” had to say-

“I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by the Jews…Terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on Congress… the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they (the Jews) don’t approve of.”

These words were not spoken by a researcher or a reporter but by a brave American hero who actually lived through and experienced the Jewish influence over our political system and media.

This Israeli political occupation of the United States should not go on unchallenged, and American Jewry should understand that secrets cannot be hidden from the people forever. Nothing less than a revolution will correct this situation. The corrective action should be taken at the ballot boxes by electing people who are not afraid to challenge AIPAC and the likes and make America’s Foreign Policy truly American and not Israeli.

As a first step in this process, let us keep the words of our dear martyred President John F Kennedy in mind- “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”.

* Hesham Tillawi, PhD

Hesham Tillawi, PhD International Relations is a Palestinian American writer, Political Analyst and a TV and Radio Talk Show Host. His program Current issues with Hesham Tillawi can be viewed Live every Thursday evening at 6:30PM Central Standard Time on Cox Cable system Channel 15 in Louisiana, Nationwide on Bridges TV, and Worldwide on Amazonas Satellite, as well as Live on the Internet at http://www.currentissues.tv.

Source

IT’S NOT ONLY THE BILLION$ POURING INTO ISRAEL THAT AID THE ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS…..

Settlements benefitting from US tax exempt fundraising
Jonathan Cook

An injured Palestinian is taken to an emergency room after he was shot by Jewish settlers in the West Bank village of Urif near Nablus, April 2009. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Gush Shalom, a small peace group that advocates Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, is preparing to send details to the US tax authorities questioning the charitable status of several organizations.

Adam Keller, a spokesman, said these operations’ tax-exempt status meant that “settlement expansion is effectively being subsidized out of the pockets of the US taxpayer and government.”

The campaign is designed to increase pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to demand action from Israel on his repeated calls — so far largely ignored — to end settlement building. Last week, Israel announced plans to build 455 new homes in West Bank settlements and 500 apartments in East Jerusalem.

Obama is expected to unveil a Middle East peace plan this month.

In a related move, Gush Shalom is encouraging Palestinians who have suffered from settler violence to file lawsuits in the United States that would redefine the settlers’ fund-raising work as support for “terrorist activity.”

The peace group has accelerated the pace of its campaign, according to a “confidential memo” it issued on 29 July that was leaked to the Israeli media, after the Israeli government heavily criticized human rights groups over the summer for receiving funds from foreign donors, particularly European governments.

In particular, the foreign ministry lambasted Breaking the Silence, a group of army veterans, for publishing testimonials from 26 Israeli combat soldiers suggesting the army committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza last winter.

Keller said: “It’s the height of chutzpah for the foreign ministry to be hounding Breaking the Silence, which is doing something entirely legal and transparent, while keeping quiet about the settler organizations’ dependence on foreign income for their illegal activities.”

Gush Shalom said it was not divulging details of the organizations it will target next month to ensure an element of surprise. But Keller said all of the 120 main settlements, which are illegal under international law, benefit from fundraising operations in the US.

Gush Shalom has already accused one organization, Shuva Israel, which is registered as a charity in Austin, Texas, of channelling funds to the Shomron Liaison Office, located in the West Bank settlement of Revava, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.

According to Shuva Israel’s website, donations are used to support several outposts close to Revava, such as El Matan, Havat Gilad and Havat Yair, which are illegal under Israeli law.

The 100 or so outposts, satellites of the main settlements, have been the settlers’ most effective method of extending their control over Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Israel has repeatedly promised the United States it will dismantle the outposts — so far to no effect.

Shuva Israel also funds Yitzhar, a settlement that hit the headlines last year when its inhabitants rampaged through the neighboring Palestinian village of Asira al-Kibliyeh in what the prime minister at the time, Ehud Olmert, called a “pogrom.”

Referring to Shuva Israel and the Shomron Liaison Office, Keller said: “From our investigations it is unclear whether these are actually two organizations with close links or two faces of the same organization.”

David Halevy, the head of Shuva Israel, told The Jerusalem Post that donations subsidized projects in West Bank settlements and outposts such as schools, libraries, youth centers and empowerment training for women.

Keller said most of the organizations were quite open about their fundraising activities, but that donations in support of the settlements almost certainly broke the terms of the US tax-exemption laws.

“On the public relations side they say they are involved in humanitarian and non-political work, but to their supporters they play up their assistance for the settlers’ nationalist and expansionist activities. This is the way we hope to catch them out.”

A recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a group of academics and former diplomats, identified several other settler organizations fund-raising in the United States.

It noted that the settlement of Sussya in the South Hebron Hills raised funds through a tax-exempt US organization called PEF Israel Endowment Funds, registered in Manhattan. In 2007, Forbes, the business magazine, ranked PEF as one of the 200 largest charities in the US.

Other US tax-exempt charities named were the One Israel Fund, which raises money for projects in outposts, and the Hebron Fund, which raises an average of $1.5 million a year on behalf of a few hundred extremist Jewish settlers encamped in the middle of Hebron.

The One Israel Fund claims on its website to be “the largest North American charity whose efforts are dedicated solely to the citizens and communities of Yesha,” a Hebrew acronym for the West Bank.

According to the ICG report, Christian Zionist groups also raise significant sums for the settlements. One website, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, lists dozens of youth and community projects in the settlements it funds.

An investigation last month by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz revealed that a group called American Friends of Ateret Cohanim had received tax-exempt status by claiming to fund educational institutes in Israel. In reality, however, it had transferred $1.6 million to Ateret Cohanim, an extremist settler group, which buys Palestinian land and homes in East Jerusalem, especially in the Muslim quarter of the Old City.

Gush Shalom also hopes to increase pressure on the funding of organizations by encouraging civil litigation in the United States from Palestinian victims of settler violence in a bid to characterize the attacks as “terror activity.”

Court rulings would then be sought to shut down the settlers’ US fund-raising arms on the grounds that they support terrorism, in an echo of legal action by right-wing Jewish groups in the US against Muslim charities.

Two additional campaigns are mentioned in the memo.

In the coming months the group plans to highlight the links between the settlements and such large international Zionist organizations as the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

The JNF funds Canada Park, established on three Palestinian villages in the West Bank, and the WZO is widely regarded as being implicated in the establishment of the outposts. In July the WZO announced that it would spend $5.5 million this year on agricultural projects for the settlers.

Gush Shalom also suggests exposing the Israeli government’s support for US lobby groups, such as Stand With Us and the Israel Project, that are engaged in what it calls “propaganda” on behalf of the settlements.


Source

JERUSALEM GETTING ITS BLOOD SOAKED RED CARPET READY TO WELCOME THE SIMPSONS

Simpsons

With all that is going on in the world….. Israel/Palestine in particular, the following made headline news in most of Israel’s major newspapers (sic).

Sacha Baron Cohen to guide the Simpsons around Israel
By City Mouse Online

Several episodes of the hit animated series The Simpsons have dealt with Jewish issues, and even the Middle East conflict over the years. However, it wasn’t until the series’ 21st season that Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie will finally visit Israel and meet a bitter and angry Israeli tour guide, played by Sacha Baron Cohen (whose characters Bruno and Borat have made him a household name.)

In the episode, tentatively set to air in the U.S. on March 28, 2010, the Simpsons find themselves in Israel, and Homer develops Jerusalem Syndrome and becomes convinced that he is the messiah.

Simpsons producer Al Jean told Entertainment Weekly that Baron Cohen will partake in aggressive dialogue with Marge Simpson. “He’s trying to get Marge to give him good grades on the comment card, and she goes, ‘You people are pushy,’ and he goes, ‘What do you mean, you people? You try having Syria for a neighbor! What do you have -Canada?'” Jean said in an interview.


The episode, named “The greatest story ever D’ohed,” is scheduled to coincide with Palm Sunday. “It’ll be a show that all faiths can come together and be offended by,” Jean promised fans of the show.

Source

And from the JP

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The following demonstrates a positive role that cartoons can play in the Peace Process….
Cartoons promoting peace

Moving exhibition of leading cartoonists initiated by bereaved families’ forum to promote tolerance, reconciliation between Israelis, Palestinians

Merav Yudilovitch


The Parents Circle – Families Forum, which includes parents and relatives of Israeli and Palestinian victims of violence, has put forward a cartoon exhibition promoting peace and reconciliation.

Participating in the exhibition are leading artists from around the world and it is scheduled to open on September 12 in the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon. The exhibition will then move to the United States and European capitals.

Participants include leading cartoonists Patrick Oliphant, Jeff Danziger, Liza Donnelly and Jim Morin as well as Palestinian cartoonist Baha Bukhari from Ramallah.

Cartoon by David Bromley displayed at the exhibition

The display is being curated by Michel Kichka, chairman of Israel’s Cartoonists Association. Kichka said,” The Parents Circle has taken upon itself a challenging and difficult task. Peace, reconciliation and tolerance are goals that seem unattainable in the morning, closer than ever in the afternoon and far off in the evening.

“This is a challenge since the grief-stricken Parents Circle has turned to a naturally extreme form of art in order to tackle a very delicate and complex issue,” Kichka explained.

Work by Andrzej Krauze displayed at the exhibition


He also added that cartoons by nature are poignant and at times blunt, humorous and painful.

Instead of providing a catalogue, the exhibition’s organizers decided to display the cartoons on a calendar marking Muslim, Jewish, Druze and Christian religious holidays. It will be put up for sale at the exhibition’s opening and all proceeds will be donated to the Parents Forum.
Over  500 families are members of the Parents Forum, with an equal number of Palestinians and Israelis. The forum offers a different approach using personal meetings and sharing personal stories with the joint aim of putting an end to violence, hatred and lack of trust.

Source

PRAYING FOR THE RIGHT TO PRAY

eid mubarek

The Holy Month of Ramadan has ended and Muslims throughout the world are now celebrating the Glorious Feast of Eid al Fitre. But the realities of the occupation in Palestine linger on as the Jews celebrate their New Year, Rosh Hashana…. meaning a total closure on the entire Occupied West Bank. During the entire month there were obstacles, some making it impossible for Muslims to pray at one of their most sacred sites…. as can be seen below.


EID MUBARAK TO MY DEAR ISLAMIC READERS AND FRIENDS!

eid cookies

Praying for Al-Aqsa access

Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem is considered the third holiest site in Islam.

During the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, thousands of worshippers make their way there to pray in the space where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

But for many Palestinians living in the occupied territories, visiting the seventh century mosque is impossible due to Israeli-imposed travel restrictions.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports on how others arrive at the site after taking considerable risks to make the journey – defying Israeli restrictions and sneaking under the separation barrier.


WEST BANK’S ‘ROBIN HOOD’ (EZRA NAWI) FACES JAIL TERM TOMORROW FOR PROMOTING THE CRIME OF JUSTICE

Israel talks ‘Peace and Justice’, but promoting it is a crime.


An Israeli pacifist could be jailed for helping Palestinians protest about their treatment. Sky’s Middle East correspondent Dominic Waghorn reports from the West Bank.

Thank you Palestine Video

BUT the REAL criminals that committed REAL crimes go unpunished.

FLASHBACK……


Human rights groups say Israel is indiscriminately using white phosphorus in Gaza’s densely populated areas.

When ignited, the chemical can burn the flesh off of a person, down to the bone.

Israel says the use of white phosphorus is permitted under international law, although it hasn’t openly admitted using the chemical.

URI AVNERY, WELCOME BACK TO REALITY!

uri~avnery

After a brief interlude with ideas contrary to the reality of the situation in Israel/Palestine, Uri Avnery seems to have gotten himself back on the right track again with the following views…

UM-Shmum, UM-Boom
Uri Avnery

Denial is the first refuge. There is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.

IS THERE no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites?

Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.

And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaust-denier nor a German neo-Nazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once “made Aliyah” and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country’s Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.

All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!

Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10 thousand Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying “End the massacre in Gaza”, “Stop the war crimes”’ “Israel commits war crimes”, “Bombing civilians is a war crime”. They chanted in unison: “Olmert, Olmert, it is true – They’re waiting in The Hague for you!”

Who would have believed that there are so many anti-Semites in Israel?!

THE OFFICIAL Israeli reaction to the Goldstone report would have been amusing, if the matter had not been so grave.

Except for the “usual suspects” (Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and their ilk), the condemnation of the report was unanimous, total and extreme, from Shimon Peres, that advocate of every abomination, down to the last scribbler in the newspapers.

Nobody, but nobody, dealt with the subject itself. Nobody examined the detailed conclusions. With such an anti-Semitic smear, there is no need for that. Actually, there is no need to read the report at all.

The public, in all its diversity, stood up like one person, in order to rebuff the plot, as it has learned to do in the thousand years of pogroms, Spanish inquisition and Holocaust. A siege mentality, the ghetto mentality.

The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It’s just not true. It never happened. It’s all a pack of lies.

By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.

From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost “normal”. But with us it has been developed into an art form.

WE HAVE a special method: when something happens that we don’t want to confront, we direct the spotlight to one specific detail, something completely marginal, and begin to insist on it, debate it, examine it from all angles as if it were a matter of life and death.

Take the Yom Kippur war. It broke out because for six years, beginning with the 1967 war, Israel had cruised like a Ship of Fools, intoxicated with victory songs, victory albums and the belief in the invincibility of the Israeli army. Golda Meir treated the Arab world with open contempt and rebuffed the peace overtures of Anwar Sadat. The result: more than 2000 young Israelis killed, and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians.

And what was furiously debated? The “Omission”. “Why were the reserves not called up in time? Why were the tanks not moved in advance?” Menachem Begin thundered in the Knesset, and about this, books and articles galore were written and a blue-ribbon judicial board of inquiry deliberated.

The First Lebanon War was a political blunder and a military failure. It lasted 18 years, gave birth to Hizbullah and established it as a regional force. And what was discussed? Whether Ariel Sharon had deceived Begin and was responsible for his illness and eventual death.

The Second Lebanon War was a disgrace from beginning to end, a superfluous war that caused massive destruction, wholesale slaughter and the flight of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes, without achieving an Israeli victory. And what was our debate about? For what was a commission of inquiry appointed? About the way the decision to start the war was taken. Was there an appropriate process of decision making? Was there orderly staff work?

About the Gaza War, there was no debate at all, because everything was perfectly alright. A brilliant campaign. Marvelous political and military leadership. True, we did not convince the Gaza Strip population to overthrow their leaders; true, we did not succeed in freeing the captured soldier Gilad Shalit; true, the whole world condemned us – but we killed a lot of Arabs, destroyed their environment and taught them a lesson they will not forget.

Now, a profound debate on the Goldstone report is going on. Not about its content, God forbid. What’s there to discus? But about the one point that is really important: was our government right in deciding to boycott the commission? Perhaps it would have been better to take part in the deliberations? Did our Foreign Office act as foolishly as it usually does? (Our Ministry of Defense, of course, never behaves foolishly.) Tens of thousands of words about this world-shaking question were poured out from the newspapers, the radio and TV, with every self-respecting commentator weighing in.

SO WHY did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.

In fact, the commission did not say anything new. Almost all the facts were already known: the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the use of flechette rounds and white phosphorus against civilian targets, the bombing of mosques and schools, the blocking of rescue parties from reaching the wounded, the killing of fleeing civilians carrying white flags, the use of human shields, and more. The Israeli army did not allow journalists near the action, but the war was amply documented by the international media in all its details, the entire world saw it in real time on the TV screens. The testimonies are so many and so consistent, that any reasonable person can draw their own conclusions.

If the officers and soldiers of the Israeli army had given testimony before the commission, it would perhaps have been impressed by their angle, too – the fear, the confusion, the lack of orientation – and the conclusions could have been somewhat less severe. But the main thrust would not have changed. After all, the whole operation was based on the assumption that it was possible to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza by causing intolerable suffering to the civilian population. The damage to civilians was not “collateral”, whether avoidable or unavoidable, but a central feature of the operation itself.

Moreover, the rules of engagement were designed to achieve “zero losses” to our forces – avoiding losses at any price. That was the conclusion our army – led by Gabi Ashkenazi – drew from the Second Lebanon War. The results speak for themselves: 200 dead Palestinians for every Israeli soldier killed by the other side – 1400:6.

Every real investigation must inevitably lead to the same conclusions as those of the Goldstone commission. Therefore, there was no Israeli wish for a real inquiry. The “investigations” that did take place were a farce. The person responsible, the Military Advocate General, kippa-wearing brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, was in charge of this task. He was promoted this week to the rank of major general. The promotion and its timing speak a clear language.

SO IT is clear that there is no chance of the Israeli government belatedly opening a real investigation, as demanded by Israeli peace activists.

In order to be credible, such an investigation would have to have the status of a State Commission of Inquiry as defined by Israeli law, headed by a Supreme Court justice. It would have to conduct its investigations publicly, in full view of the Israeli and international media. It would have to invite the victims, Gaza inhabitants, to testify together with the soldiers who took part in the war. It would have to investigate in detail each of the accusations that appear in the Goldstone report. It would have to check out the orders issued and decisions made, from the Chief of Staff down to the squad level. It would have to study the briefings of Air Force pilots and drone operators.

This list suffices to make it clear why such an investigation will not and cannot take place. Instead, the world-wide Israeli propaganda machine will continue to defame the Jewish judge and the people who appointed him.

Not all the Israeli accusations against the UN are groundless. For example: why does the organization investigate the war crimes in Gaza (and in former Yugoslavia and Darfur, investigations in which Goldstone took part as chief prosecutor) and not the actions of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya?

But the main argument of the Israeli government is that the UN is an anti-Semitic organization, and its Human Rights Commission is doubly anti-Semitic.

ISRAEL’S RELATIONS with the UN are very complex. The state was founded on the basis of a UN resolution, and it is doubtful whether it would have come into being at precisely that time and those circumstance had there been no such resolution. Our Declaration of Independence is largely based on this resolution. A year later, Israel was accepted as a UN member in spite of the fact that it had not allowed the (then) 750 thousand Palestinian refugees to return.

But this honeymoon soured quickly. David Ben-Gurion spoke with contempt about UM-Shmum (“Um” is the Hebrew for “UN”, the prefix “shm” signifies contempt). From then on to this very day, Israel has systematically violated almost every single UN resolution that concerned it, complaining that there was an “automatic majority” of Arab and communist countries stacked against it. This attitude was reinforced when, on the eve of the 1967 war, the UN troops in Sinai where precipitously withdrawn on the demand of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. And, of course, by the UN resolution (later annulled) equating Zionism with racism.

Now this argument is raising its head again. The UN, it is being said, is anti-Israeli, which means (of course) anti-Semitic. Everyone who acts in the name of the UN is an Israel-hater. To hell with the UN. To hell with the Goldstone report.

That is, however, a woefully short-sighted policy. The general public throughout the world is hearing about the report and remembering the pictures they saw on their TV screens during the Gaza war. The UN enjoys much respect. In the wake of the “Molten Lead” operation, Israel’s standing in the world has been steadily going down, and this report will send it down even further. This will have practical consequences – political, military, economic and cultural. Only a fool – or an Avigdor Lieberman – can ignore that.

If there is no credible Israeli investigation, there will be demands for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to veto such a resolution – a move that would cause grave harm to the US, and for which he would demand a high price from Israel.

As has been said before: UM-Shmum may turn into UM-Boom.


Source

NO CHANGE IN SIGHT AS FAR AS PALESTINE GOES

zio obama

Where is the CHANGE we were promised? President Obama will meet with Netanyahu and Abbas? What about including a representative of the Palestinian people? What about including the ELECTED Prime Minister of Palestine, Ishmael Haniyeh?

Nothing has changed, nothing will change until Hamas is recognised by both the Israeli government and the American government as the legitimate representatives that were duly elected to govern the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Israel has isolated them completely with its siege on the entire Gaza Strip, separating the people of Palestine into two camps. Every attempt was made recently to totally annihilate the population of Gaza…. now Netanyahu is ready to talk peace???? And Obama is naive  enough to trust and believe him?? And Abbas????? That’s another story completely.

Former president Carter, in interview with NBC, claims Palestinian group ‘adhered to ceasefire’, adds ‘ME peace not possible without Hamas involvement’……. didn’t Obama hear about this? The report on this can be read HERE.

President Carter also claimed that Hamas must be included in Israel-Palestinian peace talks. His views on that can be read in THIS report.

President Obama must realise that there cannot and will not be a just and lasting peace in this region as long as Israel continues its policies of apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. He must also realise that Abbas is nothing more than the APPOINTED Israeli Representative of the Palestinian Territories…. SUPPORTED ONLY BY ISRAEL, NOT BY PALESTINE. Saying that about Obama, WHERE IS THE CHANGE? WHERE IS THE HOPE?? WHERE IS THE PEACE???

As things stand at the moment we have proposed ‘Peace talks’ between a pro Israeli American President, an extreme right wing Israeli Prime Minister and a pro Israeli ‘representative’ of the Palestinian Authority….. DON’T EXPECT CHANGE IN POLICIES.

Obama to hold trilateral summit with Netanyahu, Abbas
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press


U.S. President Barack Obama will host a meeting Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to lay the groundwork for renewed peace talks, the White House said Saturday.

The meeting comes at a time when U.S. peacemaking efforts were encountering strong resistance in the region, and after both Israeli and Palestinian officials had said such a summit was highly unlikely to take place.

The three-way meeting will take place immediately after Obama meets separately with each of the two leaders, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday.

George Mitchell, the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, said it was another sign of Obama’s commitment to comprehensive peace. The meetings will take place in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
No announcement is expected at the meeting of the three leaders, according to an administration official. But Obama scheduled the meeting to show his personal commitment to making progress, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the discussions.

Nir Hefetz, who heads the public relations desk in the Prime Minister’s Office, said in response to the announcement that, “Prime Minister Netanyahu warmly accepts the invitation extended by the U.S. administration for a meeting with the U.S. president, and for a trilateral meeting with the president and with the president of the Palestinian Authority.”


Read the rest of that report HERE

KEEPING THE ‘MASTER RACE’ PURE

Image by Dees

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‘Protecting’ Jewish girls from Arabs

By ABE SELIG

Every night, dozens of young men in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood take to the streets and go out searching for girls.

The mall in Pisgat Ze'ev.

The mall in Pisgat Ze’ev.
Photo: sarah levin

But theirs is not a promiscuous search. In fact, the group of some 35 volunteers is looking to prevent such interaction and to stop what neighborhood residents have overwhelmingly complained is a growing problem in Pisgat Ze’ev – Arab men going out with Jewish girls.

What was once a rare occurrence, residents say, has become the norm in this north Jerusalem suburb, which shares a side of the security barrier with the Palestinian village of Anata and the scattered dwellings on the edge of Shuafat refugee camp.

Residents now say that, due to Pisgat Ze’ev’s location and increasingly mixed Arab-Jewish population, the phenomenon of mixed dating has grown, with violent outbursts breaking out frequently between Arab and Jewish youth over the matter, and with growing communal anger over what many here feel is simply unacceptable.

Source

VIDEO ~~ PALESTINE WILL BE FREE ~~ فلسطين سوف تحرر


Awakening Records is pleased to announce the release of the world’s first animated peace music video on Palestine. Palestine will be Free’ is performed by Awakening’s latest music sensation – Maher Zain.

This is the first time an animated peace music video has been produced on Palestine: “We are recognised as pioneers and constantly pushing the bounds of creativity and innovation. This animated music video for our new star artist Maher Zain is just another step in that direction and certainly not the last”, said Bara Kherigi, Director of Awakening Records. Destined to be an international success, the video features the story of a young brave Palestinian girl who never loses hope for a better future despite the harsh realities surrounding her.

ZIONISTS LOSING LOVE FOR ISRAEL ~~ HOPEFULLY THE START OF A NEW SERIES

Looking forward to many more articles such as this…..


How I’m Losing My Love For Israel

The Polymath

By Jay Michaelson


To paraphrase a recent Jewish organizational tagline, I’ve “hugged and wrestled with Israel” for 20 years now. At first, it was all embrace: Zionist songs and culture nourished me like mother’s milk, and on my first trip to Israel I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion, as did the other USY (United Synagogue Youth) kids.

Eventually, the wrestling came to the fore, particularly as I became more conscious of Palestinians, settlements and religious-secular divides. In 2002, I wrote about being “a leftist and a Zionist” and how difficult it was to maintain those dual political identities. And for several years, I’ve argued for a more nuanced approach to Israel advocacy and education than the hail of falafel balls and the bludgeon of Taglit-Birthright.

But lately I’ve noticed that I’m becoming a candidate for advocacy myself. I’ve loved Israel for decades, lived there for three years, and studied in detail the subtleties of its society and conflicts. And so it is with the sadness that accompanies the end of any affair that I notice my love is starting to wane.

Why? There are four primary reasons.

First, I admit, it has become simply exhausting to maintain the ambivalence, the hugging and the wrestling, the endless fence sitting. My love of Israel has turned into a series of equivocations: “I do not support the expansion of settlements, but the Palestinians bear primary responsibility for the collapse of the peace process in 1999.” “The Israelis acted overzealously in Gaza, but they must be entitled to defend themselves against rocket attacks.” “Yes, the separation wall is odious, but it is also effective and necessary.” Yes, but; no, but; defend, but. At some point, the complexity and ambiguity wears one out, particularly when the visuals on the anti-Israel side are so compelling, and so stark: walls, tanks, checkpoints.

I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse. I know this is a sign of weakness of will on my part, and I hope that the Times-magazine-sanctioned rise of J Street changes things, but I don’t think advocates of Israel understand exactly how bad the situation is on college campuses, in Europe, and in liberal or leftist social-political circles. Supporting Israel in these contexts is like supporting repression, or the war in Iraq, or George W. Bush. It’s gotten so bad, I don’t mention Israel in certain conversations anymore, and no longer defend it when it’s lumped in with South Africa and China by my friends. This is wrong of me, I know, but I’ve been defending Israel for years, and it’s gotten harder and harder to do so.

How much of Israel’s pariah status is fantasy and how much is reality is, of course, a complicated question, and one that I would not presume to answer in this column. In the conversations I’ve had, it’s some of each — and again a subject for equivocation. Yes, Israel’s new government is a right/far-right alliance whose foreign policy looks suspiciously like Yitzhak Shamir’s era of “Say yes and do nothing.” But on the other hand, I understand why many Israelis are fed up and voted for it, and the oversimplifications among Israel’s critics are many. For example, just because this government is expanding settlements does not make doing so an essential part of Israel’s identity.

But I’m not sure the parsing matters. I’m not sure any state with tanks can win a propaganda war against an occupied people with guns and Molotov cocktails — even if the occupied people’s leaders deserve plenty of blame. It’s exhausting to keep fighting this fight, especially as Israel’s authentically odious actions (excesses by soldiers, expropriations of land) continue to pile up, and the yes-buts grow harder and harder to maintain.

The second reason for my waning love of Israel is that the Israel I love is increasingly disappearing. It started in Jerusalem, with the exodus of the secular left and the slow, agonizing demise of the culture they created. Now, many of my sabra friends are leaving the country entirely, desperately looking for tech jobs in California or academic postings in Indiana. However worn out I may be by the matzav my friends who have lived in it are far worse. For now, Tel Aviv’s liberal, secular, life-celebrating culture continues to thrive and is even developing a spiritual aspect — but like many Israelis, I feel like I’m reading the writing on the wall.

Part of the problem here is that the Israel I love is not the Disneyland most of my fellow Americans seem to adore. Sure, I cry at Macadam and even feel moved at the kotel. But my Israel is one of shuks, cafes, shtiebels and hiking trails; of family and friends; of my alma mater on Mount Scopus and my favorite field in Talbieh (Churshat Hayareach, an open space continually threatened with destruction). Personally, I find the way many Americans strut in and out of Jerusalem for the holidays partly ridiculous and partly nauseating. So while the storybook Jerusalem remains more or less intact, I care less about it than the delicate, messy harmonies of the real ones.

Worse than that, the mythic Israel is now actively affecting — I would say harming — the real one. The handful of rich American conservatives who have influenced Israeli politics lately have tended to prefer grandiose myths to the messy realities that should govern pragmatic decision making — and eventually, all those simplifications add up to dangerous distortions in policy. The “fantasy Israel,” the one many Americans seem largely to inhabit, doesn’t compensate for the erosion of the real one. On the contrary, it causes it.

Nor am I myself immune; the third way in which my love for Israel is waning is that I’ve started to second-guess the love itself. How distant is my love of Churshat Hayareach from the sentimentality of a tourist at the Wall? (The Western one, that is, not the Separation one.) Am I not, too, an American moved, and thus partially blinded, by religious and national myth? How different am I, really, from those who value the poetry of the kotel over the prose of human rights? Am I really so different from those whose pro-Israel company I keep? It’s not that American Jews’ myths about Israel are false — it’s just that they have a way of shaping narrative, and papering over problems like, oh, the two million non-Jewish residents of Greater Israel.

This is especially the case because those problems are often rendered invisible. When my more liberal friends used to call me out about Israeli politics, I would sometimes respond that the picture they had, shaped by Western media, was a distorted one. Really, I’d say, Israel is a wonderful place — a place where doors are left unlocked and musicians play in the street, and where an almost-extinguished culture rose from literal ashes.

But, you know, a Southerner in the 1950s or an Afrikaner in the 1980s might say similar things. Yes, living within Green Line Israel, it’s possible to forget the Occupation (a term that certain Jewish news agencies feel obliged to scare quote). But maybe that’s part of the problem: The current regime of Separation (apart-ness, perhaps?) is all too effective. And so I’ve begun to second-guess even my own love of the place, wondering how much of it is built upon a foundation of deliberately constructed ignorance, a result of years of selective education. I sip my limonana, and five miles away a mother is harassed at a checkpoint. Which is reality and which fantasy?

Finally, I think my love of Israel is fading because I feel personally implicated by its injustices, even though I have chosen to live in America and have relinquished my right to have any say over Israeli policy. (If only some of my countrymen would feel similarly.) On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe. But mostly, I think, I felt relaxed because while there was certainly plenty of political baggage around, none of it was mine. I’m not implicated in Germany’s wrong decisions (to be clear, I refer more to Turks in 2009 than to Jews in 1939), whereas I do feel implicated by Israel’s.

This sense of implication is perhaps yet more fantasy — yet another American thinking he’s part of a country he doesn’t inhabit. But it comes with the territory of love, which is perhaps why I’m slowly disengaging. I understand why many Israelis feel fed up with the Palestinian problem and are ready to slam the door. But as an outsider, I no longer want to feel entangled by their decisions and implicated in their consequences. B’seder: It’s your choice to make… but count me out.

In my heart, I still love the stones and trees of Jerusalem, even though I know that love is sentimental, problematic and shared with people I mistrust. I am still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people. And, yes, I feel like underscoring, I still support the State of Israel, its right to exist and the rest. Most important, it is still, in part, my home.

But especially on this side of the ocean, more and more of those who feel similarly have politics, agendas and overall experiences of Israel very different from mine. What they love is not what I love, and how they love is terrifying. And so while my love endures, my unease grows, and with it, the gnawing sense that this relationship is in trouble.

Source


The negative opinions regarding the Palestinians are not the views of DesertPeace. Remember, the article was written by a zionist, not me.

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