On November 2nd many western leaders gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, to celebrate the downing of the notorious Berlin Wall. These hypocrite leaders; German Chancellor Merkel, French President Sarkozy, Russian President Medvedev, British Prime Minister Brown, US Secretary of State Clinton, and US President Obama, praised those who tore down the wall, emphasized the need to “overcome the walls of our time,” “keep fighting for freedom … so people get to live their dreams,” and emphasized that “all men are created equal … have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” yet none of them recognized the rights of Palestinians and Iraqis to their freedom, and none of them condemned the uglier Israeli separation and imprisoning wall that cuts the West Bank into smaller Bantustans, or the Baghdad wall that divides the city into smaller sections. Contrary to their cajoling speeches the foreign policies of these leaders have encouraged the erection of these walls. Their political support and their citizens’ tax money had encouraged rogue Israel to violate international laws and to keep constructing its separation wall. The erection of the Baghdad concrete wall, similar to Berlin Wall, exposes the hollow rhetoric of Obama and Hillary In 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled the Israeli wall as a flagrant violation of international laws. Fourteen out of the fifteen judges in the ICJ voted against the Israeli wall. The sole backer of the wall was US judge Thomas Buerghenthal, who echoed the sentiments of then US president Bush and the presidential candidate John Kerry. Read further the article here.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Walls of Shame
Monday, November 9, 2009
Every War Begins with A Lie : is Taliban = 911?
Google it and you'll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.
Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
And every war begins with a lie.
As the poet T.S. Eliot warned,
"The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right thing for the wrong reason."
Taliban = 9/11? Innocents, by the thousands and thousands, have paid and will pay in blood for this treasonous falsehood.
Read further Afghanistan by Hypnosis.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
U.S. is not a mediator but an enemy of the Palestinian people
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on November 3, 2009 that the Palestinian Authority, and all Palestinian parties, must immediately end any and all illusions about the United States or its president, Barack Obama, and instead reject its "negotiations" based on surrender and rely on the Palestinian people and their resistance, unity and national rights. Comrade Rayya Amin, of the Information Office of the PFLP, said that it must be abundantly clear that Barack Obama is nothing more than U.S. imperialism in new packaging, saying that the United States is an enemy of the Palestinian people and the Arab people, and all progressive and peoples' forces in the world. Comrade Amin stressed that the policy of the United States had not changed in any way, and was engaged in the same strategic alliance with Zionism and conquest of the Arab world that has always determined its actions. She demanded that the PA and all Palestinian, Arab and progressive forces cast aside any and all illusions about Obama and "change" and instead struggle to confront U.S. imperialism and the occupation.
Read further here.
ZAHIR EBRAHIM – At What Cost the Israel Lobby?: It's only an 'errand boy'!
'Special Standard for a Special Friend Due to its “special relationship” with the U.S., Tel Aviv remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. … What about Israel? What has their lobby been doing? … At what point will Americans say: Enough!' — Jeff Gates, At What Cost the Israel Lobby? October 12, 2009
Read also The Evil Empire by Paul Craig Roberts.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
ElBaradei Foes Leak Stories to Force His Hand on Iran
Analysis by Gareth Porter | IPS News
Western officials leaked stories to the Associated Press and Reuters last week aimed at pressuring the outgoing chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, to include a summary of intelligence alleging that Iran has been actively pursuing work on nuclear weapons in the IAEA report due out this week.
The aim of the pressure for publication of the document appears to be to discredit the November 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear programme, which concluded that Iran had ended work on nuclear weapons in 2003.
The story by Reuters United Nations correspondent Louis Charbonneau reported that "several" officials from those states had said the IAEA has "credible information" suggesting that the U.S. intelligence estimate was "incorrect".
The issue of credibility of the NIE is particularly sensitive right now because the United States, Britain, France and Germany are anticipating tough negotiations with Russia and China on Iran's nuclear programme in early September.
The two parallel stories by Charbonneau and Associated Press correspondent George Jahn in Vienna, both published Aug. 20, show how news stories based on leaks from officials with a decided agenda, without any serious effort to provide an objective historical text or investigation of their accuracy, can seriously distort an issue.
Reflecting the hostile attitude of the quartet of Western governments and Israel toward ElBaradei, the stories suggested that ElBaradei has been guilty of a cover-up in refusing to publish information he has had since last September alleging that Iran has continued to pursue research on developing nuclear weapons. Read more.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Jerusalem families waiting for US action
The Hanoun and Gawi families, consisting of 16 and 38 members, respectively, lived in their homes for 53 years. Built in 1956 by the UN and the Jordanian government (who had sovereignty over East Jerusalem at the time) as part of a temporary housing complex for refugees of the 1948 war, these were homes for those who already knew eviction and ethnic cleansing. However, this time the dispossession was accomplished "legally."
Since the 1967 conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has been building settlements along the eastern flank of Jerusalem to prevent expansion of its Arab neighborhoods. Moreover, within the past 20 years, the Israeli settlement project has begun encroaching upon the Arab neighborhoods themselves, installing nationalist Jewish families within their perimeters by force. Slowly but relentlessly, Israel is attempting to Judaize these neighborhoods in a manner designed not to attract international scrutiny and criticism.
Thus Maher Hanoun, the head of the Hanoun family, was ordered by Israeli courts to hand over the keys to his home to the Association of Sephardic Jewry on 19 July. Rather than comply with the court order, he held a press conference outside his house accompanied by several top officials, including Nils Eliasson of the Swedish Consulate representing the European Union, Robert Serry representing the UN, and Dr. Rafik Husseini of the Palestinian Authority. They all condemned the proposed eviction, calling it an affront to norms of international justice. In spite of US President Barack Obama's call to freeze Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, no representative from the US was present.
Hanoun, a 51-year-old salesman for the Nestle Corporation whose sales territory includes Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, and Tel Aviv, is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and English. He is a man of culture and conscience, a believer in peaceful co-existence. He is soft-spoken, dignified and humorous, a devoted husband and the father of three wonderful children. He is the global everyman -- simple, honest, hard-working -- hardly deserving to be evicted from his home. But he and his family were evicted, simply because they are Palestinian.
Where does this all leave us? Maher Hanoun, his two brothers and their wives and children and the Gawis, 54 persons all together, are now sleeping under trees 50 feet from their former homes. Menacing armored vehicles are parked in front of each house and the neighborhood is overrun with police, border guards and stone-throwing settlers.
The dispossession of the Hanoun and Gawi families is a clear act of defiance directed at the Obama administration's call to freeze settlements. If it succeeds, this will be a green light for Israel to continue with its ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Already five additional Sheikh Jarrah families have received court summonses and they are fated to join the Hanouns and the Gawis in the street if this supposedly "legal" land grab isn't stopped. If the new US president is to have any credibility on the international stage, he must keep faith with Maher Hanoun. Outside his home, Hanoun hung a big banner bearing President Obama's picture and the slogan "OBAMA,YES YOU CAN stop housing evictions in Sheikh Jarrah."
He and the world are still waiting.
Marcey Gayer is an Israeli-American activist residing in Tel Aviv.
Watch also the clip - Homeless in Jerusalem.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Role of US Militarism in Ahmadinejad’s Rise
Many Americans have played important roles in Iran’s contemporary history, from Howard Baskerville (1885-1909), Iran’s "first American martyr" who, while helping the revolutionaries defend the city of Tabriz (in northwestern Iran) against the forces of Iran’s dictator of the time, Mohammad Ali Shah, was killed in 1909 in Tabriz, to Joseph Cochran (1855-1905) who was the founding father of Iran’s first modern medical school, Samuel M. Jordan (1871-1952) who is sometimes referred to as the father of modern education in Iran and founded the American College of Tehran (later renamed the Alborz high school), and others. The United States also played a crucial role in forcing the Soviet Union’s forces evacuate Iran in 1946, after World War II had ended. In the Tehran Conference of 1943, Joseph Stalin promised Harry Truman and Winston Churchill that his forces will leave Iran after WW II ends, but he did not deliver on his promise until he was pressured by the U.S. But, since then, the history of the U.S. intervention in Iran’s internal affairs has been depressing, resulting in tyranny, bloodshed, and revolution. It all began with the CIA-sponsored coup of 1953 that overthrew Iran’s democratically-elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, and started the era of the U.S. influence in Iran. In addition to its great political influence over the Shah of Iran, the U.S. helped establish and train the SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded security services. These events ultimately led to the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed regime of the Shah. For decades the U.S. would not even admit its role in the 1953 coup. When Madeleine Albright did finally acknowledge it in 2000, she explained it based on the supposed Soviet military threat to Iran. On November 4, 1979, Islamic leftist students overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 53 American diplomats and staff hostage. The event should be viewed in light of Iran’s bitter experience of the 1953 CIA coup. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981. Then, in 1983, against the Algiers Agreement of January 1981 that freed the hostages, President Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Iran, most of which have remained in effect. Ever since, the U.S. goal has always been to hamper Iran’s economic development and to contain it militarily, which in turn have helped the radicals and hardliners to prevent the Iranian people from advancing their country on a democratic path. Iran’s reform movement was born in the early 1990s. But, at every stage of its development, instead of being helped by the U.S. and its allies, it has been hurt by them. On May 23, 1997, the Iranian people elected Mohammad Khatami, a moderate and progressive cleric, as their next president by a landslide. But, instead of helping Khatami by lifting at least a part of the U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Clinton administration continued to pursue its dual-containment policy, whereby both Iran and Iraq were to be contained by the U.S. military and economic might. Even when Khatami called for a dialogue among civilizations, the U.S. did not respond favorably. The hard-liners pointed to the U.S. non-responsiveness as yet another sign that it was only interested in hampering Iran’s developments, and rebuked Khatami and his supporters for wanting to resolved the differences between the two nations. Only in April 2000, after the reformists had swept the elections for the Iranian parliament, did President Clinton make a minor gesture toward Iran by lifting sanctions on the imports of Iranian rugs, pistachios, and caviar. But, it was too little too late. The Clinton administration was on its way out. Then, came the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. The Khatami administration provided crucial help to the U.S. in Afghanistan by opening Iran’s airspace to the U.S. aircrafts, and providing crucial intelligence on the Taliban. Iran’s Afghan ally, the Northern Alliance that it had supported and trained for years, was the first force that entered Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and overthrew the Taliban. Iran also played a crucial role in the formation of Afghanistan’s national unity government in December 2001. But, the Bush administration rewarded the Khatami administration by making Iran a charter member of the "axis of evil" in February 2002, and began threatening it with military attacks. This further hurt the credibility of the Iranian reformists who were advocating a rapprochement with the U.S. The U.S. then invaded and occupied Iraq in the spring of 2003. The Shiite groups that had spent their exile years in Iran, and had been supported, trained, and funded by it, were put in power in Iraq, and were considered allies of the U.S., but the George W. Bush administration accused Iran of meddling in Iraq, and continued to threaten it with military attacks. The threats helped Iran’s hardliners to further suppress dissent in Iran. In late April 2003 the Khatami administration presented a comprehensive proposal to the U.S., whereby it agreed to recognize Israel, help transform the Lebanese Hezbollah to a purely political group, and limit its nuclear program. Not only was the proposal spurned by the U.S., but it also admonished the Swiss ambassador to Iran for delivering the proposal to it (Switzerland represents the U.S. interests in Iran). Instead, the U.S. continued to threaten Iran militarily. Once again, Iran’s reformists were sacrificed by the militarist policy of the U.S. toward Iran and the Middle East. Almost at the same time, the confrontation between Washington and Tehran began over Iran’s nuclear program. Although every report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that, aside from some minor non-compliance cases, Iran had abided by its obligations towards Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its Safeguards Agreement; the Bush administration threatened Iran with military attacks more strongly than ever. The U.S. threats greatly helped Iran’s hardliners to crackdown on the reformists. First, the press that had enjoyed relative freedom during the first few years of Khatami’s presidency, was suppressed, partly because the hardliners accused it of being an agent of foreign powers. The reformists were then purged from the Iranian parliament during the 2004 elections. Then, on the eve of Iran’s 2005 presidential election, George W. Bush basically said that the Iranian people should not vote, which actually provoked the conservatives and even some nationalists to vote in large numbers and help elect Ahmadinejad. Once Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, and began using harsh, but inconsequential, rhetoric against Israel, the U.S. ratcheted up its military threats against Iran. In a show of force, and in addition to surrounding Iran with the U.S. forces on three sides, the Bush administration dispatched two carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf in May 2007, in order to frighten Iran. Dick Cheney used the deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to threaten Iran, "We’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats." All such threats were used by Ahmadinejad and his hard-line supporters to further suppress dissent in Iran, shut down independent and reformist newspapers and other publications, and accuse the reformist and democratic groups of being agents of the U.S. and other foreign powers. The constant pressure on the reformists and their oppression by the hardliners prevented them from organizing and confronting Ahmadinejad and his supporters more effectively. Even after the supposedly realist Obama administration took over in January just a few months before Iran’s presidential election, and the President began looking for Iran’s unclenched fist, the threats against Iran did not stop, nor did their nature change. Asked if the military option was still on the table with regard to Iran, the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday January 28 that, "The President hasn’t changed his viewpoint that he should preserve all his options. We must use all elements of our national power to protect our interests as it relates to Iran." Thus, decades of U.S. hostility toward Iran, and sanctions and military threats and attacks have had a net result: the efforts by the courageous people of Iran in establishing a democratic political system has been thwarted by undemocratic and even neo-fascist groups, who have used the militarist policy of the U.S. toward Iran as their excuse to suppress freedom. Text taken from here.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Is justice right side up?
Has world justice been frozen in an upside-down position? The shoe-thrower of Iraq, the man who hurled his shoes at Bush, was condemned to three years in prison. Doesn’t he deserve, instead, a medal? Who is the terrorist? The hurler of shoes or their recipient? Is not the real terrorist the serial killer who, lying, fabricated the Iraq war, massacred a multitude, and legalized and ordered torture? Who are the guilty ones—the people of Atenco, in Mexico, the indigenous Mapuches of Chile, the Kekchies of Guatemala, the landless peasants of Brazil—all being accused of the crime of terrorism for defending their right to their own land? If the earth is sacred, even if the law does not say so, aren’t its defenders sacred too? According to Foreign Policy Magazine, Somalia is the most dangerous place in the world. But who are the pirates? The starving people who attack ships or the speculators of Wall Street who spent years attacking the world and who are now rewarded with many millions of dollars for their pains? Why does the world reward its ransackers? Why is justice a one-eyed blind woman? Wal-Mart, the most powerful corporation on earth, bans trade unions. McDonald’s, too. Why do these corporations violate, with criminal impunity, international law? Is it because in this contemporary world of ours, work is valued as lower than trash and workers’ rights are valued even less? Who are the righteous and who are the villains? If international justice really exists, why are the powerful never judged? The masterminds of the worst butcheries are never sent to prison. Is it because it is these butchers themselves who hold the prison keys? What makes the five nations with veto power in the United Nations inviolable? Is it of a divine origin that veto power of theirs? Can you trust those who profit from war to guard the peace? Is it fair that world peace is in the hands of the very five nations who are also the world’s main producers of weapons? Without implying any disrespect to the drug runners, couldn’t we refer to this arrangement as yet another example of organized crime? Those who clamor, everywhere, for the death penalty are strangely silent about the owners of the world. Even worse, these clamorers forever complain about knife-wielding murderers yet say nothing about missile-wielding arch-murderers. And one asks oneself: Given that these self-righteous world owners are so enamored of killing, why pray don’t they try to aim their murderous proclivities at social injustice? Is it a just world when, every minute, three million dollars are wasted on the military while at the same time fifteen children perish from hunger or curable disease? Against whom is the so-called international community armed to the teeth? Against poverty or against the poor? text taken from here.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Torture Logic
Recent reports that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate illegal torture carried out during the Bush administration is a positive sign, especially given President Obama’s desire to avoid what he has called "a backward-looking" inquiry. When Holder began studying the brutal acts carried out in America’s name, some of them even exceeding the horrors authorized in the infamous Justice Department torture memos, he reportedly said it "turned my stomach." In "Tortured Logic," a video released by the ACLU today, you’ll hear well-known people like Oliver Stone, Rosie Perez and Philip Glass, among others, read from those chilling memos, which were disclosed as part of ACLU litigation:
Text taken from here.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Former FBI Translator: Bin Laden Worked for U.S. Right Up Until 9/11
Edmonds is a former FBI translator, who the Department of Justice's Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required). And some of Edmonds allegations' have already been confirmed by the British press. Now, Edmonds is saying that Osama Bin Laden worked for the U.S. right up until 9/11,and that that fact is being covered up because the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years. Outrageous claim, right? Actually, there are several lines of confirmation of Edmonds' claim. In other words, American forces had many opportunities to capture Bin Laden, and yet failed to do so. Indeed, even after 9/11, the U.S. military intentionally let Bin Laden evade capture. Outrageous? Don't believe it? See for yourself: And a key Al Qaeda trainer actually worked with the Green Berets and the CIA and was an FBI informant. And the former director of the National Security Agency said "By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation" (the audio is here). And, as documented by the New York Times, Iranians working for the C.I.A. in the 1950's posed as Communists and staged bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president (see also this essay). Moreover, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. If you view no other links in this article, please read the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. What does all this mean about Bin Laden? Make up your own mind. Text taken from here.
Before you hear what Sibel Edmonds has to say, you should know a little about her background.
"We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden."
This is how a government treats its own agents, not foreign terrorists.
For background, you may wish to note that the government not only listened in on Bin Laden's calls, they also heard the hijackers' plans from their own mouths.
And the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House (confirmed here by the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham; and see this Newsweek article).
And the CIA may have helped many of the 9/11 hijackers get their visas to the U.S.
Parroting the Two-State Solution
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana surprised observers on 11 July when he called, during a speech in London, for the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state by a certain date even if no agreement had been reached between Israelis and Palestinians.
On its face, this proposal sounds dramatic. There must be some who still believe that a Security Council decision would result in real and drastic action. The reality, however, is that the Security Council is not the powerful executive organ it was created to be.
Yet Solana clearly angered Israel by daring to make such a proposal. Israel is not used to being surprised, and normally the big powers consult it before making any major statements about the Middle East situation. This time it seems Solana did not seek the proper Israeli permission. Yet the Israeli anger itself seemed to give added credence to the idea that Solana must have said something significant.
Solana praised the new peace initiative of US President Barack Obama and suggested that if that fails to bring about a binding agreement between the parties, then the "international community" should intervene through the Security Council. Specifically, Solana proposed:
"After a fixed deadline, a UN Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution. This should include all the parameters of borders, refugees, Jerusalem and security arrangements. It would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the UN, and set a calendar for implementation. It would mandate the resolution of other remaining territorial disputes and legitimize the end of claims."
What this seemingly bold statement boils down to is that Solana wants the Security Council to join the chorus of those who have been singing the two-state solution song for decades. Instead of suggesting concrete measures to enforce previous and long-ignored UN resolutions, or to check Israel's violations which made a Palestinian state impossible, Solana simply wants the UN to recognize an imaginary Palestinian state as a full member of the UN.
If we try to put a positive spin on it, we could say that the "two-state solution" is already half way to being achieved. After all, one of the two states -- Israel -- has been in existence for more than 60 years, and moreover has been expanding its territory for all that time.
The problem, however, is that this "success" means that there is nowhere left for a second state. Solana, like many others, finds it easy to parrot the two-state solution, but does not have the courage to demand a complete end even to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip which began on 4 June 1967.
Israel’s Discriminatory Land Policies
In 1973, former Israeli scholar, critic, and lifelong human rights activist, Israel Shahak (1933-2001), wrote a paper titled, “What is the Meaning of the Jewish State” in which he said: “The real situation in Israel is really very simple: Israel is not an ‘Israeli’ state, or a state of its citizens but it is a ‘Jewish state.’” With regard to land, “More than 90% of the inhabited areas of the State of Israel are under the rule of the Jewish National Fund regulations, under which non-Jews cannot rent or buy a house or flat, open a business, in short cannot live. This land is called in Hebrew ‘the land’ saved. The land which belongs to non-Jews is called unsaved not national (meaning Jewish) and by buying or confiscating it from a non-Jew by a Jew, the land is supposed to be ’saved.’ ” It’s only the beginning. Numerous privileges are afforded Jews alone that include:
Read further here.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Nakba Denial by the Israel - they want us to remember Nazi Holocaust
Israel's education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba – Arabic for the "catastrophe" of the 1948 war – from a school textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced. The decision – which will alter books aimed at eight- and nine-year-old Arab pupils – will be seen as a blunt assertion by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government of Israel's historical narrative over the Palestinian one. The term nakba has a similar resonance for Palestinians as the Hebrew word shoah – normally used to describe the Nazi Holocaust – does for Israelis and Jews. Its inclusion in a book for the children of Arabs, who make up about a fifth of the Israeli population, drives at the heart of a polarised debate over what Israelis call their "war of independence": the 1948 conflict which secured the Jewish state after the British left Palestine, and led to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians, most of whom became refugees. Netanyahu spoke for many Jewish Israelis two years ago when he argued that using the word nakba in Arab schools was tantamount to spreading propaganda against Israel. Palestinians have always maintained that the 1948 refugees were the victims of Israeli "ethnic cleansing". But in recent years a new generation of revisionist Israeli historians has rejected the old official narrative that the Palestinians, supported by the neighbouring Arab states, were responsible for their own misfortune. Reflecting those changing perceptions, Ehud Olmert, Israel's last prime minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party, referred to Palestinian "suffering" at the Annapolis peace conference in 2007. Netanyahu's Likud takes a different view. "There is no reason to present the creation of the Israeli state as a catastrophe in an official teaching programme," said the education minister, Gideon Saar. "The objective of the education system is not to deny the legitimacy of our state, nor promote extremism among Arab-Israelis." There was bitter controversy in 2007 when nakba was introduced into a book for use in Arab schools only, by the then education minister, Yuli Tamir of the centre-left Labour party. "In no country in the world does an educational curriculum refer to the creation of the country as a 'catastrophe'," Saar told MPs in the Knesset yesterday. "There is a difference between referring to specific tragedies that take place in a war – either against the Jewish or Arab population – as catastrophes, and referring to the creation of the state as a catastrophe." What their leaders have said: –David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, 1948-53, 1955-63 –Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, 2001-2006 –Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 1969-1974
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.
There is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Zionist faith
Their soldiers commit cold blooded murder; use human shields, kill innocent people, commit massacres and Israelis see nothing wrong with it. They simply adore some one like Rabbi Meir Kahane, they worship Rabbi Goldstein who mowed down Muslim worships in Hebron, they adore their own army that fires tank rounds at children playing on the beach, target civilian apartments, destroy farms and uproot century-old Olive trees for the hell of it. They simply stand up and cheered as their tanks, jets, artillery level Gaza, killing so many innocent women and children and simply destroying the entire Gaza Strip. It looked like the 4th of July and they were cheering as the jets dropped phosphorous bombs on civilian targets. They cheered the power of their destructive force and they simply have no remorse for what they have done to so many hundreds of thousands of people. They are taught in their Yeshivas, killing Arabs is simply an act of divine order and is part of the new Zionist’s faith. They try to create facts on the ground, through land and water theft, and they claim they are building a “security wall” rather than an “Apartheid Wall” knowing well they are simply stealing the land, the water, destroying farms simply because they see nothing wrong with it and then they tell the world it is for “security” as if only the Israeli Jews are entitled to have peace and security and the Palestinians are simply God’s trash. If they are talking security then let them build their own wall a mile high along the 67 borders and no one will give a damn. Let them live in the Ghetto they have formed around themselves. The daily humiliations, millions of Palestinians had to endure should tell all of us something about this new Israeli “Jewish” psyche as part of a grand scheme to dehumanize the Palestinians just like the Nazis did when they commenced to dehumanize the Jews and ended up putting them in death camps. Palestinians have to wait for hours simply to go from one village to an adjacent village or to access their farms, and Israelis do this to supplement their land theft, ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem, destruction and demolition of thousands of homes, with 6,000 Palestinian homes slated for demolition in Jerusalem. The Israelis simply do not see anything wrong with their occupation; they see nothing wrong with what they and their army and government are doing to the Palestinians. Israelis and their cousins in the US have some serious issues.
Text taken from Sami Jamil Jadallah - What is wrong with Israeli “Jews”? A whole lot!.
The Jericho Six
On 25 April, 2002, four Palestinians were tried in a kangaroo-court by the Palestinian Authority and sentenced to between 1 to 18 years in prison. The four were accused of involvement in the assassination of the Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, on October 17, 2001. The four were tried in an impromptu Palestinian military court that violated all established principles of international law guaranteeing a fair trial with proper legal representation.
Violations of their detention include:
- The four defendants were tried in front of a military court despite the fact they are civilians. This is in direct violation of Palestinian law.
- The trial was presided over by Brigadier-General Ribhi Arafat who has no legal qualifications and no authority to act as a judge.
- The detainees were not provided with proper legal defence, rather, a soldier with no legal training was appointed to act in their defence.
- The trial took only 2 hours and a written charge sheet was not presented to the defendants or before the court.
- The four were found guilty despite the fact there was no written evidence or confessions from them presented to the court. The only material presented before the court were notes written by unidentified people from discussions held with the four defendants while they were imprisoned in Ramallah before the siege. There were no signatures or written verification of the veracity of these notes from the four defendants. These notes were presented as affidavits yet they were not prepared during formal interrogation or by any authorized personnel.
- The trial took place in the Presidential Compound in Ramallah while it was surrounded by Israeli tanks and heavily armed soldiers. It was held behind closed doors and was not open to the public.
Following sentencing the four political prisoners were transferred to a Jericho Prison under the control of US and British supervisors. In addition to the four, two other Palestinian detainees, Ahmed Sa'adat and Fuad Shubeiki, were also transferred to Jericho Prison. The latter have not faced trial or been found guilty of any offense yet they remain incarcerated in Jericho.
The trial of the four and imprisonment of the six are a severe violation of international and Palestinian law. They are being kept in draconian conditions under the supervision of the US and Britain. According to press reports, the person in charge of this "supervision" is the former head of the notorious Maze Detention Center in Northern Ireland.
Is this what is meant by "reform" of the Palestinian Authority, "democracy" or "respect for the rule of law"? Apparently this is the case for the US, British, Israeli and Palestinian governments.
SOURCE: http://www.addameer.org/addameer/campaigns/jericho/index.html
also: http://sumoud.tao.ca/?q=node/view/553 (EXCELLENT SITE)
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Hamas, Fatah: US wants Palestinians to abandon right of return
Senior Hamas and Fatah officials stated their objections on Sunday to what they said were US suggestions that Palestinians accept a land swap with Israel and give up the right of return. The officials said that the US is pushing for a final status agreement with Israel that does not include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and maintains so-called Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank. Senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, who deals with Jerusalem issues, said “the United States is trying to deceive the Palestinians through these proposals, which they think are creative, but [exist] only in their imaginations.” He called for the US to take concrete steps to stop Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements as an alternative. The official said, “If the United States cannot take small steps in this direction, then how it can make these big leaps that will not be accepted by the Palestinians?” “The main challenge for this administration is to stop the settlements and land confiscation, particularly canceling the Israeli decision to confiscate 139,00 dunums [of land along the Dead Sea shores and to stop the settlement plans in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.” If the US takes these “basic steps,” it could lead to “real peace,” he said. He also said that Palestinians refugees cannot give up the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel, basing their claim on UN Resolution 194. “Going around [Resolution 194] will not lead to real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.” Meanwhile Hamas senior official Salah Bardawil said that “the issue of land swap was proposed since the Camp David negotiations … President Yasser Arafat rejected this at the time then and paid his life as a price for this rejection.” Bardawil also said “We cannot accept anything that is proposed by the Americans regarding this issue.” He said “all Palestinian factions” believe that a resolution to the conflict should be based on an Israeli withdrawal from the land it occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the creation of a Palestinian state, and the realization of the right of return. He also stated Hamas’ “categorical rejection” of the alleged American proposals. “It’s a waste of time for the US administration headed by [Barack] Obama to begin its political maneuvers with a rejected argument.”
They Will Return to their Home Land.
Text taken from here.
Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney
Perhaps the worst incident at Abu Ghraib involved a girl aged 12 or 13 who screamed for help to her brother in an upper cell while stripped naked and beaten. Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, who heard the girl’s screams, also witnessed an ill 15-year-old who was forced to run up and down with two heavy cans of water and beaten whenever he stopped. When he finally collapsed, guards stripped and poured cold water on him. Finally, a hooded man was brought in. When unhooded, the boy realized that the man was his father, who doubtless was being intimidated into confessing something upon sight of his brutalized son.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
It takes Two to Tango - They just hate the Palestinian.
In Israel : Testimony - Police severely beat Malak Abu Gharbiya on Tel Aviv beach, June 2009 I live in Jerusalem and sometimes go with friends to the beach in Tel Aviv. On Friday evening, 12 June, I went to Tel Aviv with my friends Muaiad Sha’ban, 21, ‘Alaa Sharaf, 21, Wasfi Zahdeh, 20, ‘Issa a-Safdi and Ibrahim Abu Diab. I drove. We got to the parking lot next to the beach near Jaffa around 10:00 P.M. We got out of the car, put some music on and talked. A few minutes later, we saw some guys I know from Jerusalem fighting. We went and broke up the fight. A few minutes after that, two blue police patrol cars, Skodas, pulled up. They stopped next to my car. Around eight uniformed police officers got out. One of them was a woman. The guys who had been fighting ran away. My friends and I stayed by the car. A police officer came over to me. He was of average height, was heavyset, and had thin hair and dark-brown skin. “Moshe” was written on his name tag. He told me to give him my identity card. Then he went to speak with another officer, and I gave my ID to an officer who was standing next to me. He was tall, pale-skinned, and had brown eyes. His hair was combed back. A few seconds later, Moshe came over again and asked about my ID card. I told him I had given it to his friend. He shouted, in Hebrew, “Do you think I’m playing with you?” I told him I wasn’t lying and that he should ask his friend. He kneed me in the stomach and punched me hard in the chest. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I fell onto the car and my head and back hit it. I told him, “Calm down and don’t hit me. You [plural] have the ID.” I asked the other police officers to help me. A few of them tried to stand between me and Moshe, to get him to leave me alone. Moshe hit me hard on the head with a black club, and I started to bleed. I felt dazed. I tried to defend myself. In the meantime, other police officers beat me with clubs and kicked me. They were beating me from all directions. This lasted for less than a minute. I lay on the ground, with police officers around me. They kicked me all over my body, mostly in my head. It hurt a lot. My head was bleeding badly. Moshe kicked me in the face and said, “I warned you I’d screw you.” Read further here. In Egypt : "Who will hold us accountable?" I will never forget the image of the elderly woman whose son was dying in a hospital in Egypt. She only wanted to be with him. Crying, her hand touching the glass window of the office of the Egyptian intelligence services, she pleaded, "Please, please. I beg you, show mercy, let me go in." Another woman sat by the State Security office, looking up at an officer blocking her path. "You promised to let me in," she said with her soft, tired and drained voice. "Please let me in" she repeated calmly with her tired voice, then she looked at me with wide, tearful, sad eyes. I came to Gaza a week before Israel's winter invasion began. After seven months, I spent two days at Rafah crossing with the Egyptian authorities refusing to allow me to return to Lebanon, despite having all the necessary coordination documents, approval and permission from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Egyptian authorities made people wait in the arrival hall at the Rafah crossing, sitting on filthy floors where names for either the entry to Egypt or to return to Gaza were called by the voices of aggressive Egyptian police officers, or state security or intelligence personnel. After hours of waiting, two officers headed towards us: "you are being returned to Gaza." "No!" we would reply, "We have coordination documents!" But, the officers and intelligence personnel grew angrier and threw the papers in our faces humiliatingly: "This means nothing! Move on! Hurry!" After being asked numerous times "what were you doing in Palestine for seven months," I answered the intelligence officer simply, "what you didn't do." Another officer asked, "How did you come to Gaza?" "By the boats" I replied, referring to the Free Gaza Movement ship that brought me. "So, now you know why you ... can't leave," he answered back. Read further here.
Friday, July 17, 2009
China Pushing Han into Xinjiang (Uyghurstan/Eastern Turkestan) angered muslim Uighur
Uyghur protest in Munich 2008 against China policy. The "Kökbayraq" flag. This flag is used by Uyghurs as a symbol of the East Turkestan independence movement. The Government of the People's Republic of China prohibits using the flag in the country.
