Shame on us!

What will happen next? Will Palestinian kids be duped into playing music to Israeli pilots who exterminated Gaza children with White Phosphorus?

I am not against showing genuine sympathy with the victims of the holocaust. However, a sympathy that is manipulated to justify, rationalize or even extenuate the crime against humanity that is Israel is worse than a crime if only because it serves to promote and perpetuate oppression.

As human beings, we Palestinians do sympathize with all victims of Nazism, Stalinism and imperialism, the wept, the over-wept, and especially the unwept who constitute the vast majority of victims.

Having said that, however, I strongly believe that no honest person under the sun has the slightest right to demand that we pay the price for what the Nazis did or may have done to European Jews nearly 70 years ago.

We didn’t send Jews to the ovens. The Germans did. We didn’t starve Jews to death as Jews are doing to us today in the Gaza Strip.

We didn’t incinerate Jews in Gas chambers as Jews have recently incinerated Palestinian children with White Phosphorus.

Hence, of all people in this world, Palestinians must never be made to feel guilty for what the Nazis and other Europeans did to Jews. I say so because a feeling of guilt, even a modicum of guilt, on our part, would be construed or misconstrued as a vindication of Zionism, the Nazism of our time.

It is at least as insulting and humiliating as some Jews were forced or duped to play music to SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. In both cases, the act was meant to humiliate the victims and rob them of the last visages of human dignity.

And now, Jews in Israel are doing the same thing to Palestinians, Nazism’s vicarious victims.

Last week, a few innocent kids from the Jenin refugee camp were surreptiously taken to Tel Aviv to “cheer up and take part in peace-promoting activities.”

However, once there the kids were unceremoniously driven to a reception where they were made to play music and sing to “holocaust survivors,” some of them are former members of the Hagana and Irgun terrorist gangs who had taken part in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and expulsion of Palestinians form their homeland.

God knows how much Palestinian blood did these so-called “holocaust survivors” shed in 1948 and subsequent years. Certainly, Deir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, and the numerous other massacres were not committed by UFOs. They were committed in cold blood by these very people our children are now cheering up.

Shame on us a thousand times!

Some of the kids were instructed to utter words that should never be uttered by the victims of Zionism. One of the participants reportedly dedicated a special song to Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian fighters in Gaza nearly three years ago. No mention, not even an allusion, was made of the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps.

Read further this article here.

War On Terror Within: The End of Jewish History

“Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you -” a land with large, fine cities you did not build, houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill.” (Deuteronomy: 6: 10-11).

Graffiti by Israeli soldiers in a Palestinian home in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. (Radhika Sainath)

In the weeks that have just passed we had been witness to an Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. We had been witnessing one of the strongest armies in the world squashing women, elderly people and children. We saw blizzards of unconventional weapons bursting over schools, hospitals and refugee camps. We had seen and heard about war crimes committed before, but this time, the Israeli transgression was categorically different. It was supported by the total absolute majority of the Israeli Jewish population. The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. Even now when the campaign seems to be over and the scale of the carnage in Gaza has been revealed, the Israelis fail to show any signs of remorse. As if this is not enough, all throughout the war, Jews around the world rallied in support of their “Jews-only state”. Such a popular support of outright war crimes is unheard of. Terrorist states do kill, yet they are slightly shy about it all. Stalin’s USSR did it in some remote Gulags, Nazi Germany executed its victims in deep forests and behind barbed wire. In the Jewish state, the Israelis slaughter defenceless women, children and the old in broad daylight, using unconventional weapons targeting schools, hospitals and refugee camps.

This level of group barbarism cries for an explanation. The task ahead can be easily defined as the quest for a realisation of Israeli collective brutality. How is it that a society has managed to lose its grip of any sense of compassion and mercy?

Read further the article by Gilad Atzmon here.

Mr. Cheney, What About This 'Executive Assassination Squad'?

"if You Change Your Attitude, We Will Change Ours"

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday, "Of course, we have no prior experience of the new president of the American republic and of the government, and therefore we shall make our judgment based on his actions."

The US corporate media mysteriously interpreted Khamenei's words as a rebuff to Obama, but interestingly, the French news agency, Agence France Presse, got the story right, entitling their article, "Iran ready to change if US leads way: Khamenei."

And, the Iranian PressTV had an even more enthusiastic headline: "Iran vows response to real US change."

He said that the Iranian public would be offended if anyone addressed it with a discourse of carrots or sticks. That was when he immediately excused Obama from any such charge, saying the latter had a clean slate.

Elsewhere in the address he pledged, in AFP's translation, "If you change your attitude, we will change our attitude."

Iran's leader pointed out that the name of the US in the world at large is mud because of offensive US policies (he is probably thinking of wars of aggression, torture, etc.). He counsels that the US should change its behavior so that gradually its would gain the esteem of the world.

Khamenei did specify the practical steps the US might take to show it was in earnest.

1. He implied that the US was behind Sunni terrorism against the regime in Iranian Baluchistan near the the Pakistani border (Baluch are Sunnis and tribal and dislike the Persian, Shiite government in Tehran. Some observers have accused the US of fomenting terrorism among such minorities, and Khamenei appears to accept the theory).
2. He implicitly complained about continued US support for and use of the Iranian terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), whose base in Iraq (given them by Saddam to harass Iran) the US continues to maintain and guard despite the Iraqi government's desire to close it down and expel the Mojahedin. The US State Department has declared the MEK a terrorist organization, but the Pentagon is said to still deploy its members for covert ops inside Iran. In these two points, which are allusive in the speech, he is essentially accusing the US of being a major sponsor of terrorism.
3. He complained that the US continued to accuse Iran of sponsoring terrorism.
4. He complained that the US continues to accuse Iran of trying to build a nuclear bomb. (Khamenei and all Iranian government officials strongly deny that charge, saying they only have a civilian research program for energy purposes; US intelligence assessments back Khamenei up on all this, but the Washington politicians still routinely speak of taking strong measures stopping Iran from getting the bomb. Khamenei views such talk as a threat of aggression and sees the nuclear issue as a mere pretext for US neo-imperialism. The US dominated Iran during and after WW II and made a pro-monarchy coup in 1953, saddling the country with a megalomaniac shah who was subservient to US interests, until the 1979 Islamic Revolution).
5. He complained of continued US economic sanctions and boycotts.
6. He complained of US support for Israel.

American citizen critically injured after being shot in the head by Israeli forces in Ni’lin

Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
– Teah Lunqvist (Sweden) - International Solidarity Movement

Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked unarmed demonstrators, gathered against construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.

Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.

Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.

Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land (pdf) when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the Wall is built.

Reel News video: Gaza special

Trailer for the latest Reel News DVD Gaza special - over an hour of brand new films on the recent massacre, the history of the region, the amazing solidarity shown in Britain including the wave of student occupations and the unprecedented movements growing in the Middle East.

Iraq Occupation -The 6th Year

Thus far, 4,261 (pdf) members of the U.S. military have been killed in Iraq and 67,237 (pdf) wounded, not counting many diagnosed after leaving Iraq, including estimated hundreds of thousands with traumatic brain injury, hundreds of thousands with post-traumatic stress disorder, unknown numbers poisoned by hexavalent chromium or depleted uranium, also not counting the many victims of murder by veterans unable to stop doing their jobs, not counting the one in three women in the military sexually assaulted by men in the military, and not counting 6,570 suicides, and twice that many attempts, per year by veterans, and rising. Suffering and death for U.S. troops resulting from the war on Iraq is rising, not diminishing. Veterans are becoming ill, homeless, murderous, and suicidal.

Meanwhile, for Iraqis, years of homelessness, imprisonment, lack of electricity, lack of medicine, injuries, trauma, lost family members, and poisoned environments are taking their toll. Of 1.2 million killed, 2,000 have been doctors. There are 4.7 million refugees, including 20,000 doctors. Almost a third of Iraq's children suffer from malnutrition, and virtually all Iraqis lack adequate medical services, electricity, and -- in many areas -- drinking water. Cancer and miscarriages have increased dramatically. While violence is down, the same may not be true of deaths and suffering.

US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes; Israeli Aid At Stake

The Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world — that Israel has the bomb.

Officially, the United States has a policy of “ambiguity” regarding Israel’s nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.

But a Defense Department study [pdf] completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within “a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east.”

The single reference is far more than the U.S. usually would state publicly about Israel, even though the world knew Israel to be a nuclear power years before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu went public with facts on its weapons program in 1986.

Several years later investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published “The Samson Option,” detailing Israel’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against Arab states in the event it felt its very existence was threatened. Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been estimated to range from 200 to 400 warheads.

Yet Israel has refused to confirm or deny it’s nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. has gone along with the charade.

As recently as Feb. 9 President Barack Obama ducked the question when asked pointedly by White House correspondent Helen Thomas whether he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. Keeping the blinders on is necessary politically in order to avoid a policy confrontation with Israel.

By law, the U.S. would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That’s because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation.

Given the U.S.’s long history of selective blindness when it comes to Israeli nukes, it’s unlikely that the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report compiled by the Army amount to much more than a minor faux pas.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a March 8 article on the report, observed: “It is virtually unheard of for a senior military commander, while in office, to refer to Israel’s nuclear status. In December 2006, during his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates referred to Israel as one of the powers seen by Iran as surrounding it with nuclear weapons. But once in office, Gates refused to repeat this allusion to Israel, noting that when he used it he was ‘a private citizen.’ ”

Text taken from here.

Also read U.S. Army document describes Israel as 'a nuclear power' and Israel Nuclear Weapons.

Canada breaking the law by hosting war crimes suspect George W. Bush

Protesters threw shoes at a billboard image of George W. Bush outside the Telus Convention Centre, where the former U.S. president was speaking. (Andree Lau/CBC)

The Canadian government has knowingly allowed the violation of both Canadian domestic law and international human-rights law by failing to stop former U.S. president George W. Bush from crossing the border for a paid speaking engagement with a private Calgary audience.

Many competent international authorities have concluded that the available evidence establishes that Bush and the Bush administration committed torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity. Therefore Canada now has a duty to condemn, investigate, prosecute and punish those crimes.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Attorney General Rob Nicholson and other responsible ministers were notified on March 11 of specific evidence clearly demonstrating there are reasonable grounds to believe Mr. Bush has been complicit in torture and other war crimes.

Under Canada's immigration laws, if there are reasonable grounds to believe a person is complicit in these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied.

The test is not whether a person has been convicted, but whether there are reasonable grounds to think they have been involved in such crimes.

Even though Canadian officials were referred to the overwhelming evidence of Bush's involvement in torture government officials apparently took no action to bar Bush or commence an investigation.

"In a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police war crimes section and copied to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and other federal ministers and opposition MPs, the Lawyers Against the War group claims that Bush is 'inadmissible to Canada . . . because of overwhelming evidence that he has committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences' as detailed in Canada's War Crimes Act," reported Canada.com.

The letter asks the mounted police to "begin an investigation of George W. Bush for aiding, abetting and counseling torture between November 13, 2001 and November 2008 at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other places."

"The letter also alleges that Bush has engaged in 'systematic or gross human rights violations, or a war crime or a crime against humanity' under subsections 6(3) to 6(5) of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act," reported Straight.com.

Watch the angry crowd.

Ray McGovern: A Nation of Torturers

Discard the mythology of 'the Israel Lobby', the reality is bad enough

They are not all-powerful, but Israel's advocates in the US do play hardball - often hurting the cause they are meant to serve.

Now they have their Joan of Arc. Those who have long claimed that the sinister, shadowy forces of "the Israel Lobby" pull the strings of US foreign policy at last have a martyr. Last week Charles Freeman, a former diplomat, said he would not take the job he had been offered, chairing the US National Intelligence Council: he had, he said, been the victim of a campaign of "character assassination" conducted by an "Israel Lobby [willing to] plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency". In a furious statement, he declared that the "aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process".

Those who in 2006 lapped up the thesis argued by the US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, attributing to the mighty lobby the power to divert the US from its own interests, seized on Freeman's fall as decisive proof. Walt himself declared: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby'," he blogged, "think again."

Read further the article written by Jonathan Freedland here.

Nizar Sakhnini – Zionism: The Game is Over

Zionist influx into Palestine started in 1882. There were 6 waves of Jewish immigration between 1882 and 1948. As a result of these waves, the number of Jews living in Palestine increased to about 650,000.

During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists asked for the creation of a state in the territory that includes all of Mandate Palestine, Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Golan Heights and part of Western Jordan along a line parallel to the Hijaz railway and ends in Aqaba. From there, the line goes northwest to Al Arish in Egypt. (David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, p. 20. See also: Simha Flappan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: 1987, p. 17)

In 1948, Ben-Gurion considered acceptance of a Jewish state in part of Palestine as a bridgehead for future expansion whenever the time was right. His vision was spelled out in a letter to his son, Amos, stating that “A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning… We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring… We shall organize a modern defense force, a select army…and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if there is a state…” (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 91 - 92)

In a round table meeting with the French at the Sévres Conference, Ben-Gurion proposed a plan for settling all the issues in the Middle East. The plan included eliminating Nasser in Egypt and partition of Jordan, with the West Bank going to Israel and the East Bank to Iraq. In exchange, Iraq would sign a peace treaty with Israel and undertake to absorb the Palestinian refugees. Moreover, Ben-Gurion requested that Israel would annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani , with a Christian state established in the rest of the country. Ben-Gurion added that the Suez Canal would enjoy international status, that the Straits of Tiran would be under Israeli control, and that Syria should be placed under a pro-Western ruler in order to stabilize the Syrian regime. Official confirmation of the Sévres protocol was received by Ben-Gurion on 26 October and was warmly congratulated by Menachem Begin. (Ibid, pp. 236-244)

Golda Meir even denied the mere existence of the Palestinians by stating that there is no such thing as the Palestinians.

Within 5 decades, the Zionist dream began to evaporate.

In spite of all the Zionist atrocities aimed at Ethnic Cleansing, Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if the Palestinian Refugees living outside Palestine were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them.

In spite of having a large army equipped with all the high-tech weaponry provided by the U.S., Israel failed to deter or stop Arab resistance.

In March, 1968, Israel attacked the village of Karama on the East Bank of the Jordan and faced a bloody and heroic stand by the Palestinians. This battle gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a psychological boost and increased its influence.

On 24 May 2000, Israel was obliged to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, which was occupied since 1978.

On 12 July 2006, Israel started an ‘open war’ against Lebanon. The war stopped on 14 August 2006. During this war, another massacre was committed in Kana, about 54 innocent civilians, including about 37 children, were killed in an air raid, and there was a lot of damage and destruction. However, Israel failed in achieving its goal of ending Hizbullah.

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against the Gaza Strip and committed a massacre killing more than 1300 men, women and children and injuring more that 5500. The war was ended on 18 January 2009 without achieving Israel’s goal of ending Hamas.

The game is over. The Zionist lie of a ‘land without a people for a people without a land’ did not fool any one. What we are witnessing these days is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, which will not take long: 5 - 20 years…

Article taken from here.

BUSH WAR CRIMES ARE JEOPARDIZING PUBLIC HEALTH IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ

By Sherwood Ross

As commander-in-chief of the military, former President George W. Bush was responsible for U.S. attacks on hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mistreatment of their personnel and patients, and the denial of medical supplies to them and to the general populations of those nations, an authority on war crimes says.

One of the most egregious of the Bush war crimes, the force-feeding of prisoners, is being continued by the Obama administration even though it is in violation of medical ethics and the first Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, the authority notes.

In a new book that compiles the war crimes committed by U.S. forces, “George W. Bush, War Criminal?”(Praeger), political scientist/author Michael Haas writes:

“In 2001, the children’s hospital in Kabul was bombed, and the hospital in Herat (both in Afghanistan) was targeted, resulting in about one hundred deaths.. The al-Nouman Hospital in Baghdad was hit in the initial bombing in 2003 resulting in the deaths of five persons” and the Central Health Center in Falluja (Iraq) was bombed in November, 2004, killing 35 patients and 24 hospital employees.

Moreover, the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in Falluja, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, “was reduced to rubble,” Haas writes, and when U.S. troops entered Falluja’s General Hospital, they forced all hospital employees and patients to lie on the ground and tied their hands behind their backs.”

The above acts violated the Red Cross Convention of 1864, which requires that “ambulances and military hospitals shall be acknowledged to be neutral…and shall be protected and respected by belligerents so long as any sick or wounded may be therein.” The acts also violate the 1929 Geneva Convention that says personnel ministering to the sick “shall be respected and protected under all circumstances.”

What’s more, on March 4, 2007, U.S. marines left the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, battlefield “without attending to those whom they had wounded,” Haas writes, and in July, 2008, U.S. soldiers blocked Afghan villagers from rescuing wounded civilians they sought to take to the hospital. This violates Article 1 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 that states “The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.”

Haas also notes that when Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld issued an order denying prisoners the right to see a physician for six weeks from December 2, 2002, to January 15, 2003, even though the Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 15, states, “The Power detaining prisoners of war shall be bound to provide free of charge for their maintenance and for the medical attention required by the state of health.”

Haas writes that prisoners suffering from asthma, diabetes, heart conditions, hepatitis, leg wounds, and other maladies went untreated in the Middle Eastern countries invaded by the U.S. and that doctor visits also have been denied to Guantanamo prisoners “to induce cooperation.”

“Medical facilities, medicines, staff, and supplies were inadequate for the large number of prisoners at Abu Ghraib (Iraq),” Haas writes, and prisoners at Guantanamo were force fed even though the Tokyo Declaration of 1975 prohibits physicians to interfere medically with those who want to stop eating.

And where the Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 55, states, “the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population,” American and British vetoes in the Security Council blocked the release of $500 million in funds from the UN’s Iraqi oil-for-food account. Instead, they diverted the money to the Coalition Provisional Authority(CPA), “which failed to purchase needed supplies,” Haas writes..

And where the Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 56, states “Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties,” on May 23, 2003, the CPA fired top-level Iraqi government employees, including medical personnel. “The best hospital in Baghdad was converted into an American military hospital,” Haas writes, and the health administrator sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dr. Frederick Burkle, was fired after one week “because he lacked political connections..” Haas adds that his replacement “failed to authorize funds for emergency rooms to treat victims of the insurgency, the most important medical problem at the time.”

According to Haas, a Belgian physician that visited 25 medical facilities in April, 2004, concluded, “Nowhere had any new medical material arrived since the end of the war” and that there was no sterile treatment at Al Nour Hospital, “as a result of which all patients with major burns are doomed to die.”

Haas states “the main result of the misoccupation of Iraq is an actual reduction in the state of public health.” He notes U.S. authorities actually “reduced the number of medicines available while occupying the country” and that children continue to be stricken with leukemia because the U.S. military “refuse to use Geiger counters to locate and dispose of ordnance containing depleted uranium despite pleading from the World Health Organization. “In matters of health, the Americans have descended like a plague of locusts on Afghanistan and Iraq,” Haas concluded.

Haas’s book lists 269 separate categories of war crimes for which former President George W. Bush was responsible. The book is arranged so that each category and the applicable war crimes statutes appear together. While those crimes concerning torture and the absence of due process are best known, the Haas book includes a wide range of war crimes violations from the failure to respect the legal framework of the invaded countries to the failure to promptly repatriate prisoners of war to the failure to protect public property.

Article taken from here.

Gaza 2009: De-Osloizing the Palestinian Mind

By winning the 1948, 1956 and 1967 wars, and by getting international, Arab and Palestinian recognition, Israel–as an Apartheid settler-colonial state—has hoped to move into a new stage; a stage that requires the formation of ‘new consciousness' amongst colonized Palestinians.

Herein lies the danger of Oslo; Osloization, within this neo-Zionist context, means the creation of a new paradigm through which you wash out the consciousness of your supposed enemy-the ‘Other'-and replace it with a one-dimensional mentality, through the construction of a fiction (two states for two peoples) whose end is unattainable.

Put differently, to aim at creating the two-state Palestinian is to aim at creating false consciousness led by assimilated intelligentsia, some of whom have a revolutionary past record. Singing the slogans of "the two state solution," "two states for two peoples," "return to the 1967 borders,"–or even "a long-term Hudna" (as proposed by Hamas) — is intended to guarantee the subordination and conformity of the Palestinians, especially those with revolutionary ideas. Gone are the right of return of 6 million refugees and their compensation, and the national and cultural rights of the indigenous population of Palestine 1948.

This goal, however, never sees the antithesis it creates as a result of displacement, exploitation, and oppression; it ignores the revolutionary consciousness that has been formulated throughout the different phases of the Palestinian struggle. Nor does it take into account the legacy of civil and political resistance that has become a trademark of the Palestinian struggle. Hence the necessity of the formulation of Palestinian alternative politics. To be conscious of the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and of the huge class gape that the Oslo Accords have created has definitely been the beginning of De-Osloization represented in the Al-Aqsa uprising and the outcome of the 2006 elections. This is an oppositional consciousness that the signatories of Oslo did not take into account. Both events represent an outright rejection of the Oslo Accords and their consequences.

Repeating the two-state mantra, carrying the Palestinian flag, singing the national anthem and— more importantly—recognizing Israel, regardless of the rights of two thirds of the Palestinian people, are what Oslo is all about.

The lesson we learn from Gaza 2009 is to harness all effort to fight the outcome of the Oslo Accords, and to form a United Front on a platform of resistance and reforms. This cannot be achieved without dismantling the PA and realizing that ministries, premierships, and presidencies in Gaza and Ramallah are a façade not unlike the South African Independent Homelands with their tribal chiefs. The classical national program, created and adopted by the Palestinian bourgeoisie has reached its end unsuccessfully. Most political forces, including the governing party in Gaza, fail to explain how 6 million Palestinian refugees will return to the Israeli State of the Jews and an independent Palestinian state will be created at the same time.

Read further the article here from Haidar Eid, Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, and a member of the One Democratic State Group

The Oil Factor - Blood for Oil?

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski explains the locations of America oil bases overseas.

The Middle-East holds 70% of the world's oil reserves while North America and Europe will run out of oil in 2010 at their current rate of production. Current technologies might provide alternatives to oil for energy but not to oil for plastics.

In the wake of Vice-President Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force, is it a coincidence if George Bush targeted Iraq in its so called "war-on-terror", a country known to possess the second largest oil reserves in the world? Is it another coincidence if U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Central Asia are based near Central Asian oil and natural gas? Was invading Iraq and Afghanistan really meant to reduce terrorist threats against the United States or was it a ploy to guarantee that the average American can go on for a little while consuming 4 times more energy that the average European or 32 times more energy than the average African?

After a year-and-a-half investigation and a three-month trip to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, "THE OIL FACTOR" looks at both the human cost and the greater geo-strategic picture of George Bush's "war-on-terror". With solid facts & figures, maps and graphics and original footage shot on location, the doc features such personalities as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Noam Chomsky, The Project for the New American Century Director Gary Schmitt, best-seller "Taliban" author Ahmed Rashid and the Pentagon's Karen Kwiatkowski.

Watch the clip.

The Oil Factor - Blood for Oil? | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

John Dean: "Potentially A War Crime; Potentially Murder"

“We have lived in a golden age of impunity, where a person stands a much better chance of being tried for taking a single life than for killing ten thousand or a million.”

Watch the movie.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Also read A History of War Crimes.

Don't Cut and Run, But Get Out of Iraq Now

Why are you in Afghanistan?

Endless U.S. global domination

Rather than shrinking, the overseas base network has for the most part expanded in scope and size, as a result of the Bush administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its broader efforts to assert U.S. geopolitical dominance in the Middle East, Central Asia, and globally.

Since the invasions of 2001 and 2003, the United States has created or expanded bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there may be upward of 100 and 80 installations, respectively, with plans to expand the basing infrastructure in Afghanistan as part of a troop surge.

In Eastern and Central Europe, installations have been created or are in development in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic, and are contributing to rising tensions with Russia. In Africa, as part of the development of the new African Command, the Pentagon has created or investigated the creation of installations in Algeria, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, and Uganda. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States maintains a sizable collection of bases throughout South America and the Caribbean, with the Pentagon exploring the creation of new bases in Colombia and Peru in response to its pending eviction from Manta, Ecuador.

In total, the Pentagon claims it has 865 base sites outside the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Notoriously unreliable, this tally omits bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other well-known and secret bases. A better estimate is 1,000. While ultimately the motivation behind the Bush reorganization plan was the neoconservative dream of endless U.S. global domination, the previous administration was right to criticize the basing network as outdated, bloated, and profligate.

In the midst of an economic crisis, there has never been a more critical time to dramatically shrink the U.S. web of overseas bases.

Too Many Overseas Bases: David Vine argues that in addition to freeing money to meet critical human needs at home and abroad, closing overseas bases would help rebuild the U.S. military. Vine also writes about what happened after Rumsfeld' s unrealized dream of radically rearranging the U.S. empire of bases in Battle Over Bases.

Read also The Imperial Unconscious.

UN General Assembly President Condemns ICC Move Against Bashir

UN General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Speaking yesterday in Geneva, he said the move was politically motivated, and had nothing to do with justice for the population of Darfur. D'Escoto's position as president of the UNGA makes him a good authority for the education of Hillary Clinton and President Obama, while putting on notice the likes of Susan Rice, and those, like her, who have adopted the Anglo-Dutch approach to wreck Sudan as a sovereign Nation.

"I am sorry about the decision of the ICC. It is more a decision motivated by political considerations than really for the sake of advancing the cause of justice in the world," the Nicaraguan diplomat said.

It would have preferable to let the ongoing peace negotiations on Darfur continue, rather than turn the issue into an international legal matter, he added.

He said it was "absurd" to have ignored calls by the African Union not to issue the warrant. He indicated that the operation against Sudan was run by a small group, i.e., not all the "genocide" hounds. He said there were "a few people with a very dubious past" who "put themselves on a pedestal of purity and immaculate behaviour" with respect to the situation in Sudan.

"To find the peace we are looking for, it would be important to begin by indicting people from powerful nations, not smaller ones," said d'Escoto, adding that "everyone knows who I am talking about. The biggest atrocity today is the one being committed in Iraq.".

THE POLITICS OF WAR CRIMES

First note that the ICC can now be viewed as a tool of hegemonic U.S. foreign policy, where the weapons deployed by the U.S. and its allies include the accusations of, and indictments for, human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To understand this, we can ask why no white man has yet been charged with these or other offenses at the ICC—which now holds five black African “warlords” and seeks to incarcerate and bring to trial another black man, also an Arab, Omar Bashir. Why hasn’t George W. Bush been indicted? Or what about Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? Henry Kissinger? Ehud Olmert? Tony Blair? Vadim Alperin? John Bredenkamp?

Following on the heals of the announcement that the ICC handed down seven war crimes charges against al-Bashir, a story broadcast over all the Western media system and into every American living room by day’s end, President al-Bashir ordered the expulsion of ten international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Darfur under the pretense of being purely ‘humanitarian’ organizations.

What has not anywhere in the English press been reported is that the United States of America has just stepped up its ongoing war for control of Sudan and her resources: petroleum, copper, gold, uranium, fertile plantation lands for sugar and gum Arabic (essential to Coke, Pepsi and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). This war has been playing out on the ground in Darfur through so-called ‘humanitarian’ NGOs, private military companies, ‘peacekeeping’ operations and covert military operations backed by the U.S. and its closest allies.

However, the U.S. war for Sudan has always revolved around ‘humanitarian’ operations—purportedly neutral and presumably concerned only about protecting innocent human lives—that often provide cover for clandestine destabilizing activities and interventions.

Americans need to recognize that the Administration of President Barack Obama has begun to step up war for control of Sudan in keeping with the permanent warfare agenda of both Republicans and Democrats. The current destabilization of Sudan mirrors the illegal covert guerrilla war carried out in Rwanda—also launched and supplied from Uganda—from October 1990 to July 1994. The Rwandan Defense Forces (then called the Rwandan Patriotic Army) led by Major General Paul Kagame achieved the U.S. objective of a coup d’etat in Rwanda through that campaign, and President Kagame has been a key interlocutor in the covert warfare underway in Darfur, Sudan.

During the Presidency of George W. Bush the U.S. Government was involved with the intelligence apparatus of the Government of Sudan (GoS). At the same time, other U.S. political and corporate factions were pressing for a declaration of genocide against the GoS. Now, given the shift of power and the appointment of top Clinton officials formerly involved in covert operations in Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and Sudan during the Clinton years, pressure has been applied to heighten the campaign to destabilize the GoS, portrayed as a ‘terrorist” Arab regime, but an entity operating outside the U.S.-controlled banking system. The former campaign saw overt military action with the U.S. military missile attacks against the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (1998); this was an international war crime by the Clinton Administration and it involved officials now in power.

The complex geopolitical struggle to control Sudan manifests through the flashpoint war for Darfur and it involves such diverse factions as the Lord’s Resistance Army, backed by Khartoum, which is also connected to the wars in the Congo and northern Uganda. Chad is involved, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Germany, the Central African Republic, Libya, France, Israel, China, Taiwan, South Africa and Rwanda. There are U.S. special forces on the ground in the frontline states of Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the big questions are: [1] How many of the killings are being committed by U.S. proxy forces and blamed on al-Bashir and the GoS? And [2] who funds, arms and trains the rebel insurgents?

Read also Ex-UN Prosecutor: Bush May Be Next Up for International Criminal Court.
Also Bush may follow Bashir to The Hague.

Clinton sabotage a Palestinian reconciliation?

During last year's US election campaign, Clinton claimed she helped bring peace to Northern Ireland during her husband's administration. Yet the conditions she now imposes on Hamas are exactly like those that the British long imposed on the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, thereby blocking peace negotiations. President Bill Clinton -- against strenuous British objections -- helped overturn these obstacles by among other things granting US visa to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, whose party the British once demonized as Israel now demonizes Hamas. Like Tony Blair, who as British prime minister first authorized public talks with Sinn Fein, Hillary Clinton knows that the negotiations in Ireland could not have succeeded if any party had been forced to submit to the political preconditions of its adversaries.

On Friday 27 February, the leaders of 13 Palestinian factions, principal among them Hamas and Fatah, announced they had set out a framework for reconciliation. In talks chaired by Egypt's powerful intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the Palestinians established committees to discuss forming a "national unity government," reforming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to include all factions, legislative and presidential elections, reorganizing security forces on a nonpolitical basis, and a steering group comprised of all faction leaders. Amid a jubilant mood, the talks were adjourned until 10 March.

Then the blows began to strike the fragile Palestinian body politic. The first came from Clinton just before she boarded her plane to attend a summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh ostensibly about pledging billions in aid to rebuild Gaza.

Clinton was asked by Voice of America (VOA) whether she was encouraged by the Cairo unity talks. She responded that in any reconciliation or "move toward a unified [Palestinian] Authority," Hamas must be bound by "the conditions that have been set forth by the Quartet," the self-appointed group comprising representatives of the US, EU, UN and Russia. These conditions, Clinton stated, require that Hamas "must renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous commitments." Otherwise, the secretary warned, "I don't think it will result in the kind of positive step forward either for the Palestinian people or as a vehicle for a reinvigorated effort to obtain peace that leads to a Palestinian state."

None of the Western diplomats imposing conditions on Hamas have demanded that Israel renounce its aggressive violence. Indeed, as Amnesty International reported on 20 February, the weapons Israel used to kill, wound and incinerate 7,000 persons in Gaza, half of them women and children, were largely supplied by Western countries, mainly the US. In a vivid illustration, Amnesty reported that its field researchers "found fragments and components from munitions used by the Israeli army -- including many that are US-made -- littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people's homes."

For Palestinians to "renounce violence" under these conditions is to renounce the right to self-defense, something no occupied people can do. Palestinians will certainly note that while Abbas stands impotently by, neither the US nor the EU have rushed to the defense of the peaceful, unarmed Palestinians shot at daily by Israeli occupation forces as they try to protect their land from seizure in the West Bank. Nor has Abbas' renunciation of resistance helped the 1,500 residents in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan whose homes Israeli occupation authorities recently confirmed their intention to demolish in order to make way for a Jewish-themed park. A cessation of violence must be mutual, total and reciprocal -- something Hamas has repeatedly offered and Israel has stubbornly rejected.

While Israeli violence is tolerated or applauded, Israel's leaders are not held to any political preconditions. Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu emphatically rejects a sovereign Palestinian state and -- like his predecessors -- rejects all other Palestinian rights enshrined in international law and UN resolutions. When told to stop building illegal settlements on occupied land, Israel responds simply that this is a matter for negotiation and to prove the point it revealed plans in February to add thousands of Jewish-only homes to its West Bank colonies.

Those who claim to be peacemakers should heed this advice. They should allow Palestinians to form a national consensus without external interference and blackmail. They should respect democratic mandates. They should stop imposing grossly unfair conditions on the weaker side while cowering in fear of offending the strong, and they should stop the cynical exploitation of humanitarian aid for political manipulation and subversion.

It is ludicrous to demand that the stateless Palestinian people unconditionally recognize the legitimacy of the entity that dispossessed them and occupies them, that itself has no declared borders and that continues to violently expand its territory at their expense. If Palestinians are ever to recognize Israel in any form, that can only be an outcome of negotiations in which Palestinian rights are fully recognized, not a precondition for them.

The Egypt-hosted Donor Conference to despose Hamas.

Ever since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, there has been a familiar pattern in the Occupied Territories: Israel destroys Palestinian civilian infrastructure, and the international community foots the bill.

This has been reproduced once more, on a grand scale, as billions of dollars were promised this week at the Egypt-hosted donor conference for devastated Gaza, far exceeding the Palestinian Authority's initial target.

It remains to be seen how much of this aid will actually get through to the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, who continue to live in the rubble of thousands of homes, and hundreds of businesses, factories and schools. Two-thirds of the US contribution of $900 million, for example, is not even earmarked for Gaza.

The root of Gaza's problem is not a lack of aid, but Israel's politically-motivated blockade. It's not primarily about the rockets, or even Gilad Shalit: it is "a siege designed to depose Hamas rule".

Some people can have short memories. Israel's "ever-tighter economic blockade" goes back to the redeployment of summer 2005 and it considerably worsened after the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel's goal, as Ha'aretz described, "was to prevent Hamas from enabling the population to lead a normal life", an act that "constituted collective punishment for 1.5 million Palestinians", with the assumption being "that economic distress would bring down the Hamas regime".

The second problem with the donor conference is the way in which it was another exercise in denying the obvious: Hamas has to be engaged, not sidelined. There's something absurd, for example, about the British government's parallel recognition of the need to talk with Hamas (itself a relatively new development), as long as it's not '"us" doing the talking.

The donor conference then, called on behalf of a territory whose ruling authorities are to be excluded from both the planning and implementation of reconstruction, is a continuation of a bankrupt and failed strategy. In a superb bit of unintended irony, Blair was asked on al-Jazeera about the prospect of working with a hard-right Netanyahu government. His reply – "We've got to work with whoever the Israeli people elect" – should tell the Palestinians exactly how much their democratic will is valued in comparison.

The third problem with the donor conference is the hypocrisy of seeing countries that are responsible for Gaza's miserable state lining up to score political points by donating money for aid. It's not only that Israel received military hardware and diplomatic cover from the same dignitaries now shaking their heads at the "devastation" they did nothing to stop. In fact, Gaza was suffering under abysmal conditions before Operation Cast Lead, on account of the international community's policies of punitive isolation and aid-as-weapon.

There is also the question of how the aid will make a practical difference on the ground, given that Israel refuses to let in even tomato paste and paper – not to mention construction materials, generators (or "an entire water purification system"). Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth observed: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."

Text taken from Aid as a weapon by Ben White.

Obama Expands War

The Obama Administration has engineered a triple setback for the U.S. peace movement and the millions of Americans who opposed the Bush Administration’s unjust, illegal, immoral wars.

In the last two weeks of February, President Barack Obama — upon whom so many peace supporters had counted to change Washington’s commitment to wars and militarism — delivered these three blows to his antiwar constituency:

1. By ordering 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan Feb. 17, President Obama is continuing and expanding George W. Bush’s war. It’s Obama’s war now, and it’s getting much bigger.
2. By declaring Feb. 27 that up to 50,000 U.S. soldiers would remain in Iraq after “combat brigades” departed, President Obama is continuing the war in a country that remains a tragic victim of the Bush Administration’s aggression and which has taken the lives of over a million Iraqi civilians and has made refugees of 4.5 million people.
3. By announcing Feb. 26 that his projected 2010 Pentagon budget was to be even higher than budgets sought by the Bush Administration, President Obama was signaling that his commitment to the U.S. bloated war machine — even at a time of serious economic recession — was not to be questioned.

Read further the article here.

Also With Iraq plan, Obama embraces US militarism.

U.S. War in Afghanistan Haunted by Bush war Crimes

by Prof. Michael Haas

While additional American troops are being deployed to Afghanistan, George W. Bush’s misdeeds continue to handicap combat effectiveness there. Past disrespect to the country must be reversed by an immediate apology to the Afghan people and new orders to field commanders to follow the Geneva Conventions on the battlefield.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan began in 2001 as a war of aggression similar to the attack on Iraq. Prior to the start of that war on Oct. 7, 2001, the Taliban government in Kabul offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, if the U.S. provided proof he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Bush deemed Kabul’s response insufficient and he attacked without adequately seeking an alternative or peaceful way to resolve differences…and the UN was not given a proper role. This attack violated Article 2 of the UN Charter that states “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity…of any state…”

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq attacked the United States, so neither war was based on self-defense. Preemptive war is not an accepted form of self-defense under international law.

The list of U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan alone documented in my book include the following:

• The U.S. bombed the children’s hospital in Kabul and a hospital in Herat, resulting in 100 deaths. This violated the Red Cross Convention of 1864 that established even military hospitals as “neutral” and that must be “respected by belligerents.”
• Clearly marked Red Cross warehouses were bombed on three occasions in the Afghan War during October 2001, a violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929 that protects “the personnel of Voluntary Aid Societies.”
• During its 2001 offensive in Afghanistan, at least 1,000 civilians were killed by U.S. carpet bombing. This violates Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions prohibiting “indiscriminate attacks” against civilians.
• While the Hague Convention of 1899 requires that prisoners be “humanely treated,” this was often not the case in Afghanistan where the conditions in the prisons were so shocking that Canadian forces stopped sending prisoners to the American-run prisons at the end of 2005, preferring to send them to facilities run by the Afghan government.
• Although the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbids “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,” captives were murdered in Afghanistan’s prisons. Some were chained naked to the ceiling, cell doors, and the floor. One man, Ait Idr, had his face forced into a toilet that was repeatedly flushed. Another, Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel, was hit with his arms tied behind his back until his head began to bleed. Another, Ahmed Darabi, was hung by his arms and repeatedly beaten, though he survived---unlike (a) taxicab driver (named) Dilawar, who died from the same treatment.
• Prisoners of war “shall be lodged in buildings or in barracks,” says the POW Convention of 1929 but many cells at American-run prisons in Afghanistan lack windows and adequate ventilation. Some prisons lacked heat during cold weather so that prisoners died of exposure. What’s more, some prisoners have been held in solitary confinement for years.
• Where the Geneva Convention decrees sick or wounded prisoners “shall not be transferred as long as their recovery may be endangered by the journey,” some prisoners transferred in Afghanistan were thrown to the ground from helicopters and badly injured. Still others were kicked or beaten en route and others died while stuffed into sealed cargo containers. Not surprisingly, the deaths of some Afghan prisoners have never been recorded, another war crimes violation.

Aggressive war was first declared to be illegal when the U.S. and France coauthored and later ratified the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, thus incorporating that document into what the U.S. Constitution calls ”the law of the land.” Furthermore, the U.S. is a signatory to both the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, and the Tokyo Charter of 1946.

The Nuremberg Charter, for example, defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation or the waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties…,” a definition that fits U.S. actions in Afghanistan during 2001.

It is not only the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq whose rights have been trampled, for today the globe is being transformed into an unchecked superpower playpen where might appears to make right. Hundreds of years of human rights progress are in serious jeopardy as long as governmental war criminals live blissfully in the knowledge that they will never be accountable for their crimes.

The more the public observes reference in the news to possible war crimes violations, the more decision makers will be accountable. Otherwise, the impunity of high Bush administration officials for the immense violations documented….threatens to turn back the clock on human progress by shredding the Magna Carta, the American Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and similar agreements that have advanced humanity from barbarism toward civilized behavior.

Bush has accomplished a transformed United States where leaders have abandoned democratic principles and loyal citizens are profoundly ashamed of how the ideals of the country they love so much have been abandoned. Something must be done or Americans will believe that whatever Bush has done was right.

Bringing George W. Bush and his administration to justice for war crimes is the most compelling way in which to dispel the fiction that what has been done was necessary and proper. Otherwise, the specter of war crimes will continue to haunt the world, and civilization itself will unravel helplessly.

Article taken from here.

Remembering Jaffa

Palestinians from Jaffa attempt to take with them whatever they can as Zionist militias force them to leave the city, May 1948. (Palestine Remembered)

The early years of Jaffa's Nakba

Zionist forces initiated a cruel siege on the city of Jaffa in March 1948. The youth of the city formed popular resistance committees to confront the assault. On 14 May 1948, the Bride of the Sea fell to the Zionist military forces; that same evening the leaders of the Zionist movement in Palestine declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Approximately 4,000 of the 120,000 Palestinians managed to remain in their city after it was militarily occupied. They were all rounded up and ghettoized in al-Ajami neighborhood which was sealed off from the rest of the city and administered as essentially a military prison for two subsequent years; the military regime under which Israel governed them lasted until 1966. During this period, al-Ajami was completely surrounded by barbed wire fencing that was patrolled by Israeli soldiers and guard dogs. It was not long before the new Jewish residents of Jaffa, and based on their experience under Nazism in Europe, began to refer to the Palestinian neighborhood as the "ghetto."

In addition to being ghettoized, the Palestinians who remained in Jaffa had lost everything overnight: their city, their friends, their families, their property and their entire physical and social environment. Most had lost their homes as the Israeli military forced them into al-Ajami. Legislator, judge and executioner in the Ajami ghetto was the military commander; without his permission one could not enter or leave the ghetto, and rights to things like education and work were among those rights that Palestinians were denied. Arab states were classified as enemy states, and so making contact with the expelled family and friends, the refugees, was strictly prohibited. This was the nightmare lived by the Palestinians of Jaffa after the 1948 Nakba.

In the early 1950s, Jaffa was administratively engulfed by the Tel Aviv municipality that became known as Tel Aviv-Yafo; the Palestinians of Jaffa went from being a majority in their city and homeland to the two-percent "enemies of the state," a minority of Israel's main metropolis. The municipality immediately began drawing up plans for what they called the "Judaization" of the city, renaming the Arabic streets of the city after Zionist leaders, demolishing much of the old Arab architecture, and completely destroying the buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods and villages that were depopulated during the 1948 Nakba. The new curriculum introduced in Palestinian schools denied that the place had any Arab-Palestinian history at all, a facet of the Israeli education system that continues until today.

The largest armed robbery of the 20th century

After expelling most of Jaffa's residents, militarily occupying the city and ghettoizing the remaining original inhabitants, Israeli authorities passed the Absentee Property Law (1950) through which it seized the property of all Palestinians who were not in possession of their immovable properties after the Nakba. Through the implementation of this unjust law, the state of Israel sent its operatives to all corners of the land, surveying the properties left behind by the expelled refugees, the internally displaced Palestinians banned from returning to their lands, and those relocated to the ghettos of Palestine's cities. Title to these lands, buildings, homes, factories, farms and religious sites were then transferred to the state's "Custodian of Absentee Property." This is how the Palestinians of Jaffa, the refugees and the ghettoized, had their properties "legally" stolen by the State of Israel.

In the interviews conducted for our research, we heard dozens of stories from Nakba survivors telling us about how their homes, often just meters away from the ghetto, were seized, and how they could do nothing about it. Many told us stories of how their homes were given to, or simply taken by, new Jewish immigrants, and how they would try to convince the new residents of their homes to give them back some of their furniture, or clothes, or documents, or photographs. In some of these cases, the house's new resident would give back some of the items, in most of the cases the response was to consider the original Palestinian owner an intruder, and to call the police or report him to the military commander. Former residents of the al-Manshiyya neighborhood, one of the city's wealthier areas before the Nakba, described the sorrow they felt as they walked past their old houses, and the pain of seeing what remained of the neighborhood demolished to be replaced by a public recreation area.

Some of the most difficult stories are those of the Palestinian farmers and peasants from the villages of the Jaffa district. They describe how they were forced off of their land, how they managed to stay in Palestine, how the Israeli government handed their land over to Jewish settlers, and how these settlers then hired the same Palestinian farmers to work on their own land as day laborers exploited for the personal profit of the Jewish settler off the produce of the land that Palestinians had cultivated for generations. In fact, after their properties and enterprises were seized or shut down, the vast majority of the Jaffa Palestinians who remained became cheap labor for Jewish employers. Their employment was contingent on their "loyalty" to the new state. And so it was that the people who ran the economic hub of Palestine before 1948, became its orphans feigning loyalty to the ones who orphaned them in order to feed their own children.

Text taken from the article Jaffa: from eminence to ethnic cleansing.