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July 11, '07
Jewish leaders concerned by trend to delegitimize Israel (Haaretz)
Olmert at Jewish conference: Not all Jews want to make aliyah
...The trend toward delegitimizing Israel's existence as a Jewish state is growing not only in Europe, but also in the United States, according to Jewish-American academics and community leaders..Anti-Israel attacks are even beginning to affect Jewish supporters of Israel, who have been accused of trying to silence public debate, they said... [It's about time - the Editor (a Jew who wouldn't dream of "making aliyah." )]
Hamas' stand: An official of the movement describes its goals for all of Palestine
MOUSA ABU MARZOOK is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Damascus, Syria — HAMAS' RESCUE of a BBC journalist from his captors in Gaza last week was surely cause for rejoicing. But I want to be clear about one thing: We did not deliver up Alan Johnston as some obsequious boon to Western powers..It was done as part of our effort to secure Gaza from the lawlessness of militias and violence, no matter what the source. Gaza will be calm and under the rule of law — a place where all journalists, foreigners and guests of the Palestinian people will be treated with dignity. Hamas has never supported attacks on Westerners, as even our harshest critics will concede; our struggle has always been focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to it — a right of occupied people that is explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention...
Fire Foxman: Denying the Armenian Genocide should be the last atrocity perpetrated by the ADL chief, by Joey Kurtzman (jewcy.com)
...Abraham Foxman’s ADL acquiesced, and in so doing, performed the pièce de résistance of Foxman’s highly effective, if unintentional, decades-long campaign to demoralize Jewish America and send young Jews scurrying for the communal exit doors. The ADL chief is a danger to the future of the community, and it is a scandal that he remains at the head of a major Jewish organization. Foxman must go. And the organization he has done so much to shape must either change or go with him...
In November, the American electorate repudiated Bush's Iraq debacle and established Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate promising to bring this "flawed policy wrapped in illusion" to a decisive end. Bush vetoed their withdrawal timetable, but voters urged their leaders to hold the line and not be bullied. In the end, though, 37 Democratic senators capitulated and gratuitously gave the President his $100 billion no-strings-attached blank check . . . enough money to pay tuition and fees for 1.3 million college students for four solid years!...
ROR Conference in Akka / Film clips from social struggle in Tel Aviv, a Letter from Henry Lowi
Palestine continues to bleed under the racist Zionist regime and its Palestinian underlings. The bankruptcy of those who claim to be the "resistance" and those who claim to speak for "moderation" is visible to all. Everyone has noticed their murderous effectiveness against their Palestinian brothers and sisters. Everyone has compared this murderous effectiveness with their uselessness against the Israeli occupation forces...
Iranian Jews indifferent to Zionists' efforts for immigration (IRNA)
The Zionist regime's news sources have confessed that the Zionist organizations' efforts to persuade Iranian Jews to immigrate to the occupied territory has had no result and the Iranian Jews prefer to live in Iran..Israeli daily "Ma'ariv" has written in this concern that the Jews Immigration Organizations in Israel has decided to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the Iranian Jewish families to persuade them for immigration while other immigrant Jews have not enjoyed such incentives..The daily wrote, "The Zionist agencies allocated assistance for Iranian Jews willing to immigrate to Israel but they prefer to stay in Iran. The assistance includes free education at universities and large amounts of loan to buy houses, cars and other home appliances..Ma'ariv said, "Israeli officials are trying to persuade Iranian Jews to immigrate there at any cost."
911 Was Staged To Defame Muslims, by John Kaminski (Yemen Times)
In addition to the millions of Americans who are protesting their nation's unjust and immoral torture of the shellshocked country of Iraq, there are also a substantial number of people in the U.S. who see through the lies of Zionist controlled U.S. mainstream media and believe the story told to them by their government about the tragedy of September 11, 2001 is merely another self-serving, nightmare fairytale meant to rally political support by the ignorant and uncaring for the continuing American/British/Israeli assault on the Islamic world...
Border Control: Who told them to give birth at night?, by Akiva Eldar (Haaretz)
The small
village of Azun Athma is located in the southeastern part of
the West Bank, not far from Qalqilyah and too close to
Israel and the Jewish settlements of Etz Efraim, Elkanah,
Sha'are Tikva and Oranit, which surround it in all
directions. To ensure the security of the residents of
Israel and for the sake of the settlers' convenience, the
Palestinian village has been encircled by a fence and has
become an enclave closed on all sides. In order to partake
of essential services in the West Bank, the inhabitants of
Azun Athma pass through a gate controlled by the Israel
Defense Forces. They undergo physical searches each time
they exit and enter. At 10 P.M. the soldiers close the gate
and only open it again the next morning at 6 A.M..It is
common knowledge that the Palestinians suffer from a serious
lack of discipline, which starts in their mother's womb.
There are fetuses that insist on coming into this world
right at the time when the Israeli soldiers go to sleep...
DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL, by Faysal Ruwahya
The 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in July 2006 motivated me to write 8 letters [to members of the U.S. Senate] about our policy in the Middle East...A number of the Senators justified our total blind support of Israeli policies at the expense of United States geopolitical interests in this oil-rich region. These senators do not mind providing billions of taxpayer monies to assure the Jewish state [remains] the military "superpower" in the Middle East...various Democratic and Republican administrations preach that Israel would serve American interests...pro-Israel organizations, especially during election times, have been very generous in providing money and votes to American presidential candidates and members of Congress as long as they meet one criterion - serving Israel’s political, economic and military interest...I also will share with you the events that took place in Israel to demonstrate that the "oasis of democracy" in the Middle East is totally different from our great democracy...
How Can Blair Possibly Be Given This Job?, by Robert Fisk (truthdig)
I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create “Palestine”. I checked the date - no, it was not 1 April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being “our” Middle East envoy...
Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America (truthdig)
The ongoing hand-wringing in Congress by the newly empowered Democrats over what to do about the war in Iraq speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof) these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. The inability to reach consensus concerning the level of funding required or how to exercise effective oversight of the war, both constitutionally mandated responsibilities, is more a reflection of congressional cowardice and impotence than a byproduct of any heartfelt introspection over troop welfare and national security...
One country, one state (Electronic Intifada)
This press release was issued on 6 July 2007 by the speakers in the course "Palestine-Israel: Un Pais, Un Estado," which took place from 2-6 July 2007 as part of the Summer Program of Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Partition once again failing to bring justice: Israel's wall annexes agricultural land from the Palestinian town of Abu Dis, photographed 25 June 2006. (Moamar Awad/MaanImages)
For decades, efforts to create a just peace for Palestinians and Israeli Jews have failed. The current crisis has further set back hopes for a political solution to the conflict..In this context, a group of scholars, journalists and activists met in Madrid, at the invitation of Universidad Complutense de Madrid, for five days of intensive discussion on alternatives to this ongoing impasse, framed by their belief that a democratic state in all of historic Palestine provides the only moral and practical basis for a just, sustainable peace..Presentations were informed by the understanding that the attempt to partition historic Palestine, regarded by the major powers as a solution to the conflict, has failed to bring about justice and peace or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. It was argued that the two-state approach encourages separation where equality and coexistence are imperative...
All Constitutional Rights are Your Legal Tools, by Nancy Levant (The Muckraker Report)
July 3, 2007 -- Feeling frequently defeated by the designers of the one-world government and their “emergency powers/martial law” system, today I feel like scrapping. I have the Constitution of the united States of America to back me up - so bring it on, you traitorous jerks..I am an American, and I run this government. No politician, no executive order, signing statement, act, hidden legislation, Federal Reserve Corporation, or “regional” council, or elite council or commission is above the Constitution or me. I hold all legal keys to this nation, and so do all American people. We are the legal barrier to tyranny, greed, and sedition. The buck, or Federal Reserve Note, if you prefer, stops here...
Les Roberts: Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit (The Independent)
The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide
On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq... there was a study, peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, which put the death toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I co-authored, was done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to estimate mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the findings are imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested that the Iraq government was at least downplaying the number of dead by a factor of 10...
Israel destroys trees in Ertas village (video from PalCast)
Israeli soldiers destroy
Palestinian fruit trees in Ertas village near Bethlehem to
make way for the sewage facilities of a nearby illegal
Israeli settlement. Despite the Palestinians inviting the
soldiers for tea, their trees, from which they earn their
living, are uprooted the next morning...
The Israeli police state, by Avigail Abarbanel (The Electronic Intifada)
On Friday, 8 June 2007, my husband Ian flew to Israel. He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him to make a short three-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit my brother and his family...At Ben-Gurion airport Ian's Australian passport was confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a small interrogation room and had to endure an intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and Lebanese visas in his passport...As a former Israeli citizen with military training I am familiar with the psychological tactics used by the Israeli Border Patrol (MAGAV) and by the military. They deliberately try to intimidate their victim and keep him (or her) in a state of uncertainty -- about what is going on, what it's all about, where his papers are. They know that foreign nationals would feel profoundly insecure without their passports...
The Power of Belief and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Avigail Abarbanel
Apologists for Israel are deeply relieved when they can find a flaw in anyone who criticises Israel. If you are a non-Jew you must be an antisemite, they would argue. If you are a Jew then you must be crazy or a ‘self-hater’. Being a former Israeli from a Jewish background, and a supporter of a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine, I regularly receive hate-mail from Zionist fanatics telling me that I have psychological problems that cause me to criticise Israel and Zionism. The idea that Israel's behaviour itself might justify criticism is inconceivable and unacceptable to these people...
July 9, '07
Gen. William Odom Speaks Out On Iraq (Truthdig)
...a retired three-star general who has proved his patriotism and loyalty to U.S. troops serving in Iraq by truly keeping their best interests at heart and advocating for their mental and physical well-being—as well as for their speedy and safe withdrawal from Iraq..Odom, who has been making a case for withdrawal for years now, reiterated his message in a strong piece, succinctly titled “ ‘Supporting the troops’ means withdrawing them,”...
Armed hostilities between Jews and Arabs will break out if the UN General Assembly accepts the plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states....The Jews are expected to be able to mobilize some 200,000 fighters in Palestine.. The Jewish armed groups in Palestine are well equipped and well trained in commando tactics. Initially they will achieve marked success over the Arabs because of superior organization and equipment...The US by supporting partition has already lost much of its prestige in the Near East In the event that partition is imposed on Palestine, the resulting conflict will seriously disturb the social, economic, and political stability of the Arab world, and US commercial and strategic interests will be dangerously jeopardized...
Priest drawn to Islam loses her collar for year, by Janet I. Tu (Seattle Times)
The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, a local Episcopal priest who announced she is both Muslim and Christian, will not be able to serve as a priest for a year, according to her bishop..During that year, Redding is expected to "reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam," the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to Episcopal Church leaders...
How
It All Began: Truman and Israel, by HARRY CLARK
(Counterpunch)
The Truman Administration's policy on Palestine challenges at its start the "strategic asset" view of the US-Israel relationship, and reinforces the "Israel lobby" view, as argued in the recent article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Truman's support for the creation of a Jewish state was due entirely to the US Jewish community, without whose influence Zionist achievements in Palestine would have been for nought. Long before any strategic argument was made, indeed, while a Jewish state was considered a strategic liability, long before Israel's fundamentalist Christian supporters of today were on the map, the nascent Israel lobby deployed its manifold resources with consummate skill and ruthlessness.
From the Harry S. Truman Library: Oral History Interview with Edwin M. Wright (U.S. State Dept)
I accused the Zionists of using political pressures and even deceit in order to get the U.S. involved in a policy of supporting a Zionist theocratic, ethnically exclusive and ambitious Jewish State. I, and my associates in the State Department, felt this was contrary to U.S. interests and we were overruled by President Truman...In addition, Zionists and Christian Fundamentalists have frequently used the Hebrew Bible as an authority for justifying a Jewish State. As late as summer 1976, Candidate Jimmie Carter stated,
"I am pro-Israeli, not because of political expediency, but because I believe Israel is the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy."
So the Bible--and belief that it is God's Holy Word and infallible, became a useful tool in Zionist propaganda...
Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary: 1947 Writings Offer Fresh Insight on the President (WP)
"The
Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S.
Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on
the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and
released by the National Archives yesterday...the most
surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written
on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation
with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary.
Morgenthau called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine
-- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500
Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the
British, then rulers of that land..."He'd no business,
whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense
of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic]
on world affairs."
A
time for joy and reflection, by Khalid Mish'al (The
Guardian)
We cheer the hard-won release of Alan Johnston, who was captured in a chaos imposed from afar
Together with all freedom loving peoples, we in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, shared the moment of sheer joy yesterday when Alan Johnston stepped out of the darkness of captivity into the light of freedom...We pay tribute to the stoic dignity with which the BBC correspondent in Gaza bore his ordeal. We commend the patience and faith of his parents and all the British, Palestinian and other people around the world who campaigned and prayed for his release. From the outset, we committed ourselves to securing his release. I entered into discussions with British officials, shared information and gave assurances of our concerted efforts to secure Alan's release...
Answer to Rosenfeld: Jewish History, Anti-Semitism, and the Challenge of Zionism, by Mark Braverman (JewishConscience.org)
...Rosenfeld’s piece was the latest salvo in the bitterly fought battle currently underway within the Jewish community on the subject of Israel. Since, as the title implies, I have written this piece to take issue with his charge that these Jews are anti-Semitic, why have I opened with these stories, which illustrate Jewish attitudes toward non-Jews? I have done so because the attitudes revealed in these two memories – experiences bracketing 50 years of modern Jewish history -- begin to explain why we as contemporary Jews are confronting the agonizing moral and political dilemma embodied by the State of Israel...
...But then this budding romance begins to go sour. Darth protests angrily at the unilateral US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, he defies the captain over his rape of Iraq and he demands back "his" military bases in Central Asia. He angrily announces that building other, fancier missile bases in eastern Europe would be considered an act of war. It finally became clear even to Captain Bush that Darth was not really his soulmate after all...
Now the Americans build a new vast “embassy” in Baghdad, rather an occupation command centre for the area; and even optimists began to understand that the US is NOT going home from the conquered Iraq, not now, not in the next year, not at all, never. They do not go away..Indeed, over half a century passed since the defeat of Germany, but the US bases firmly remain in Europe and Japan. The playwright Anton Chekhov said that a gun hanging on a wall in the beginning of a performance will discharge at the end. The US military is the greatest danger to Europeans. - from the Introduction by Israel Shamir
It is a well-established and deliberately unaddressed historical fact that the CIA created "radical Islam" and Islamic "terrorism" during the Cold War. It is also a documented fact that the US, its allies, and their intelligence agencies (CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Britain’s MI-6, etc.) have -- from the 1970s to the present day -- continued to use and guide terrorist groups, including "Al-Qaeda," as intelligence and propaganda assets. "Islamic terrorism" is a manufactured weapon of Western geostrategy, serving Anglo-American interests...
911: In Plane Site - The Directors Cut - Full High Quality Video
The entire documentary is here, and in a higher quality than is available elsewhere on the Internet. Probably the most watched 911 Documentary done on 911, seen by perhaps as many as 50 MILLION people worldwide. Has shown on National TV stations in over a dozen different countries! Our great nation in is dire danger, so please make sure you post this video on your websites and blogs and help spread the word that 911 was an inside job, and a conspiracy of significant proportions, and we, as Americans need to stand up and fight the terrible lies and injustice of 911 as well as demand those truly responsible be held accountable, arrested, tried and convicted...
Obsession with slandering Islam and Muslims, by Louay Safi (Iviews)
Steve Emerson's Fantastic Obsession
What would an investigative reporter turned director of a private intelligence operation, who is increasingly obsessed with proving that mainstream Muslim American organizations are radical, do when he fails to find evidence to support his obsession? Human decency and Ethical conduct dictate that he give up his obsession and admit that he was wrong. Steve Emerson, the director of the shadowy Investigative Project, thinks otherwise. Rather than doing the right thing and give up his bigoted endeavor, he decides to use fantasy to forge evidence and prolong his compulsive obsession...
Open Letter to the Editor of the Financial Times, by Joachim Martillo, Boston
The reason for the persistence and recruiting success of the jihadis is obvious. When civil discussion is blocked, only uncivil discussion like terrorism, bombings and assassination is left. Arabs and Muslims have some serious concerns that the US and UK political leadership refuse to engage...
The war within Fatah (Al-Ahram)
Dismissing the recent infighting in Gaza as a showdown between Fatah and Hamas only is simplifying a far more complex problem, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
Tensions are growing between supporters of the American-backed Dahlan faction and the supporters of Yasser Arafat. Tensions between the two polarised camps increased dramatically last week when Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who backs Dahlan, fired veteran Fatah leader and former PA interior minister Hani Al-Hassan who had accused Dahlan of planning to murder him -- a charge which Dahlan vehemently denied..The dismissal followed alleged remarks made by Al-Hassan on Wednesday during an interview with the pan- Arab Al-Jazeera TV network where he argued that the recent showdown in Gaza was not a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas but one between Hamas and the Dahlan faction...
See also The Crisis in Gaza: Made in Israel, by Michael Warschawski (Znet)
July 7, '07
DIVESTMENT TASK FORCE (New England United Methodists): Report and Recommendations - June 2007
Despite renewed talk of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the hard reality is that Israel’s actions on the ground in the region, as well as Palestinian militant attacks on Israelis, place enormous obstacles in the way of progress toward peace.. This month marks 40 years of Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation. Three generations of Palestinians have been denied their freedom...The occupation harms Israelis as well. The expense of wars and military occupation is draining the Israeli economy and having a negative effect on its society as a whole. Today, 1.6 million Israelis (nearly a quarter of the population) live in poverty...
At a moment when the Palestinian community and Palestinian rights are under severe attack, Palestinian community organizers and leaders from around the U.S. have come together to build towards a Popular Conference for Palestinians in the U.S.. This Popular Conference will, in the words of the statement of these organizers produced at a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, "empower our community, unify our voice, and affirm the right of Palestinians in the Shatat (exile) to participate fully in shaping our joint destiny."...
Blockade helps Gaza militants, says report (The Guardian)
Israel's latest blockade of Gaza is threatening to destroy the territory's commercial sector and drive more people into the hands of extremists, according to a report published yesterday..In the last three weeks, 75% of Gaza's factories have closed because they are not allowed to import raw material or export finished products, forcing thousands of families to rely on food aid to survive...
The revolution starts now, by Osamah Khalil (The Electronic Intifada)
Palestinian students take part in a demonstration marking the 59th anniversary of the Nakba in the West Bank city of Nablus, 15 May 2007. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)
No time in the recent history of the Palestinian people has appeared darker or more devoid of hope. Internally divided, splintered across the globe, and lacking effective representation, the Palestinian national movement is arguably at the lowest point in its history. Moreover, Palestine today serves as the harbinger of the future of an Arab world under siege, occupied by external forces allied with internal collaborators intent on sowing and feeding divisions. Outside of Palestine, refugees and exiles are under constant threat and pressure from Arab regimes and Western governments, with little or no support from the traditional institutions which once represented them on the world stage. Yet, if there is to be hope it is in the desiccated and ostensibly defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to which Palestinians must turn. The time has come for Palestinians globally to regain and reinvigorate the institution that the world still recognizes as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."...
Congress should begin impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney (ImpeachCheney.org)
[Perhaps this year's greatest political understatement - the Editor]
Congressional Israeli Agent meets with Collaborator Fayyad (Written by JTA Breaking News)
[Editor's note: If the Jewish Zionist Lobby and the Jews in Congress don't approve, even the collaborators will get nothing. Fayyad appropriately genuflected. At least, this agent's name doesn't hide what flag he salutes. -- Jeffrey Blankfort]
A top Jewish congressman discussed U.S. funding for the Palestinians with the Palestinian Authority prime minister..Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) met Thursday with Salam Fayyad Thursday during Israel's brief July 4 break trip to Israel and the Palestinian areas..Rep. Israel, who had opposed funding for the Palestinian Authority when Fayyad was a finance minister in a Hamas-led government, said he was encouraged now that Fayyad led a government that had split from the terrorist group...
Untouchable Scooter Scoots as Conyers Blows Hot Air, by Kurt Nimmo
Congress critter John Conyers, who predictably reneged on a promise to impeach the decider-commander guy after the Democrats took control of Congress, now tells us he will look into not only Bush’s commuting of convicted criminal Scooter Libby’s sentence, but will review all recent presidential pardons. “Yes, we’re going to review all of them, including Clinton’s, Bush one, Bush two, we’ll go back as far as they want,” Conyers told the Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News division. “We’ll be doing the research. We won’t need to review each and every one of them but the whole idea is to examine to what use this part of our criminal law is being put and whether it’s being used adequately or are there other changes necessary.”..Sure, John. And the moon is made of blue cheese...
Stonewalling in Ramallah (Al-Ahram)
Even as the Abbas government does Israel's bidding, it is being targeted by its new patron, reports Khaled Amayreh from East Jerusalem
The Ramallah-based Palestinian "emergency government" continues to adamantly reject any rapprochement with Hamas, despite growing calls to this effect by a number of key Arab and Muslim countries as well as Palestinian intellectuals.. Instead, the government, backed by the United States and Israel, is asserting its authority (although this doesn't mean much in real terms given the ubiquitous reality of the Israeli occupation), ostensibly in preparation for holding early general elections with or without Hamas's participation...
In Sudan, Help Comes From Above, by JULIE FLINT (NYT)
THE one bright light in the dismal international response to the slaughter and starvation in Sudan’s Darfur region has been a humanitarian effort that has kept more than two million displaced people alive. In the fifth year of the war, mortality levels among Darfurians reached by relief are marginally better than they were before the war and lower than in the capital, Khartoum. In South Sudan, where conflict is stilled, children have higher death rates and lower school enrollment..This is a formidable achievement, better than in any comparable war zone in Africa. Credit the likes of Oxfam, Mercy Corps and Doctors Without Borders, and their 13,000-strong army of relief workers — 90 percent of them Sudanese..Yet these successes will be lost if Democratic presidential candidates get their wish: a no-flight zone that is militarily enforced over Darfur...
Interviewing Gilad Atzmon is never easy, but always interesting. It’s challenging because when it comes down to it, there is so much material, it has to be drastically reduced to make an interview fill an acceptable, customary length that is palatable to the average reader. It is interesting because he is able to effortlessly and authoritatively address a wide range of topics in an entertaining way...
The most recent scandal in American academia is the firing of Dr. Norman Finkelstein by De Paul University, despite the recommendations of his colleagues and peers, students, and his publishing record, all of which would normally assure academic tenure to someone in his position. It seems therefore, that Dr. Norman Finkelstein application failed not because of any professional or personal failings, but rather because of considerations external to his person, none of which have been explained...
Shot while filming a gunbattle: Israelis Target Another Journalist (Reuters - video)
Jul. 5 - A Palestinian
camerman is hit by a volley of bullets while filming clashes
between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in
Gaza..The cameraman, Imad Ghanem was filming for Hamas's
al-Aqsa television channel when he was fired upon..In video
filmed by a colleague he can be seen lying on the ground
with his camera by his side...
Whither the Chosen People?, by Shmuel Rosner (Haaretz)
WASHINGTON - A working paper prepared for next week's Conference on the Future of the Jewish People, sponsored by The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, contains the following assessment: "The future of the Jewish People is not assured, through there are great opportunities" for thriving. The opportunities are accompanied by quite a few dangers, some more talked about, such as the Iranian threat; some less discussed, such as a possible weakening of the United States as a global power.
July 5, '07
Unethical media coverage on UK events, by Elias Davidsson
Western media publish daily news and commentaries about the alleged terrorist events in the UK. These writings have all in common to designate innocent persons, who nobody has proven guilty, as terrorists...
Call Out The Instigator, by Cindy Sheehan
...I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon —and you know he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in. I can’t sit back and let this BushCo drag our country further down into the murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the rest of the world with them!..
Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust, by Richard Falk, TFF Associate
There is little doubt that the Nazi Holocaust was as close to unconditional evil as has been revealed throughout the entire bloody history of the human species. Its massiveness, unconcealed genocidal intent, and reliance on the mentality and instruments of modernity give its enactment in the death camps of Europe a special status in our moral imagination...Against this background, it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as ‘holocaust.’...
WORLD POWER: WHENCE DOES IT COME? WHO HAS IT? WHERE IS IT GOING?, by Adrian Salbuchi
"We know it and you know it: in human affairs there can only be true Justice when the parties to a conflict have similar strength and power; Otherwise, the stronger shall do all in their power to achieve their ends, and the weaker shall have no choice but to succumb" - Thucidides
"All animals are equal, however, some animals are more equal than others" - 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell...
Libby a long-time Israeli intelligence agent - Wayne Madsen Report
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been a long-serving intelligence agent for Israel's Mossad, according to a veteran CIA "official cover" officer who spoke to WMR on deep background. The CIA's Clandestine Service has, over the years, gathered a tremendous amount of intelligence on Libby's activities on behalf of Mossad...
A Declaration of Independence From Israel, by Chris Hedges
Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue. They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war was over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid...The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state...
A Fourth Of July Card From Judy Andreas
Unhappy Fourth Of July, America. Are you ready for your annual celebration?..As you don your party hat, take a good hard look into the mirror of your soul. Do you like what you see? Can you beautify the face of hypocrisy with a chorus of The Star Spangled Banner?...
Howard Zinn: Put Away the Flags
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed..Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?...
Boston Jew Advocates Mass Murder
Just in case you were wondering what pro-Israel advocates mean when they say "peace" - they mean the silence of the grave. Rest assured, they will not stop with Hamas. There is no greater risk to American national security than the Zionist Fifth Column. What would happen if we voted in a political party that supported the end of US funding for Israel's existence? Tom Mountain has the solution: Murder us all.
"Today the Gaza Hamas terrorists are armed with more and better weapons than they were in 1970, when the PLO ran the territory. And they’re a lot more fanatical. The only positive side to battling the PLO was that they actually knew when they were defeated, and tended to surrender rather than be gunned down by the IDF. But Hamas is like the Japanese kamikaze, fanatical to the point where they’ll kill themselves and any Jew, soldier or civilian that they can get their hands on."... ( by Tom Mountain, the Jewish Advocate )
Fourteen Congress Members For Impeachment,by David Swanson
The official list of cosponsors of H Res 333 to impeach Dick Cheney cannot be updated until July 10 when Congress gets back to Washington. But Congress Members can contact Dennis Kucinich's office in the meantime and sign on. And citizens can encourage them to do so. In fact, this is the week in which you should visit your Congress Member's district office and demand that he or she sign onto Kucinich's articles of impeachment or introduce their own. And they should not just sign on, but make a public statement in support. Here's everything you need to know: http://impeachcheney.org ...Congress is off this week, so your Representative is home making appearances at community events. What a great opportunity to grab a video camera and ask them point blank: what's your excuse for not co-sponsoring H.Res. 333 ? Democrats.com is paying $100 for each "no excuse" video asking a Democrat in the House why (s)he has not co-sponsored H.Res. 333 and recording their response on video: http://www.democrats.com/youtube-your-rep ...
"Clearly the best book on the subject." —David Remnick, editor in chief of the New Yorker
"Two Israeli scholars weigh in with a provocative argument that runs counter to much of the false received wisdom on the subject. . . . A convincing intervention in the public debate regarding Hamas—a debate that is mainly dominated by the group's demonization." —Rashid Khalidi, author of Palestinian Identity
"This work
makes a significant and long overdue contribution to
scholarship on Hamas and Islamist groups. . . . Mishal and
Sela have made here an excellent contribution to the field
with a thoughtful, analytical, and well-documented case
study which goes far in revealing a realist, 'de-demonized'
Hamas." —Middle East Journal
His
name is Ibrahim. He is a Muslim and the 34-year-old
Palestinian husband of an American, a Christian minister,
Reverend Dr. Mary Ethridge, DTh, who is several years his
senior. Their marriage took place by “power of
attorney” because he was never able to come to her, or
she to him. Mary calls him her heart, and Ibrahim calls her
his soul. They shared a dream. Until recently, Dr. Ibrahim
Al-Majayda was the director of the American Cultural Center
in Gaza City. “But now Ibrahim's life is at stake
because of the Center and his relationship to me,” Mary
wrote recently. She asked if I could petition government
officials and write a news report to get Ibrahim out of Gaza
to safety...
A
Series of Essays written in June 2007, by
Voltaire
(RePortersNoteBook)
The Name Of The Game Is Lie
...But if they can convince the ignorant, brainwashed Americans that the Arabs are the cause of the problem by mislabeling them "terrorists" then Israel can continue its odious policies with the blessings of the American treasury...
A Whitewash In Academic Ink
Jewish books written for the general public are rather like Jewish edited newspapers for the masses. They are completely inconsistent with what Jews admit in their "Jewish studies" reference works and their own private press. The latest example is a book entitled: The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War Two and The Holocaust, by Jeffrey Herf.
Lady Godiva With The Butch Haircut
Sexual harassment has become such a crusade that it may be instructive to review the history of the concept. How did the ancient Romans, the Mayans, the Aztecs and the others deal with the problem? The answer, obviously, is that they didn't -- because the problem did not exist...
The
justifications for the existence of the Jewish State fall
into several categories: the theological, the historical and
the political. All the justifications are unsustainable;
many of them are mutually contradictory. First, let us
examine the theological
claims...
Henry
Ford and the Jewish Question: Part
II
(RePortersNoteBook)
So what is one to make of Henry Ford's series of writings on Jews? [The International Jew) is an amalgam of dark speculations on Jewish conspiracy combined with some interesting and, on the whole, accurate information on Jews and perceptions of Jews during the period. The weekly articles, which were compiled into a 4-volume book version that was never copyrighted and has thus been in the public domain for over 80 years, merit a fair and accurate summary...
The Kosher Labeling Scam Revisited, by Rich Brooks
Well, here I am back at it again, fighting the kosher labeling scam – a hidden tax which unconscionably robs Gentiles of a big chunk of their hard-earned grocery dollars. Just how big this chunk is has been difficult for me to determine, because the food companies are singularly evasive when queried about the subject. If you ask them directly, their PR flunkies will try to placate you by claiming their costs for kosher certification are “negligible,” but you can never pin them down on an actual dollar amount...You can just imagine the hue and cry from the ADL and the ACLU if the shoe were on the other foot -- if another religion were to place its Good Housekeeping seal of approval on 90% of the items sold in supermarkets, and furthermore had the chutzpah to charge for the involuntary privilege of eating food processed to their peculiar specifications...
Rabbi Lerner apologizes for racist remarks but then... (RePortersNoteBook)
...Rabbi Michael Lerner has apologized for some racist comments he wrote about the superiority of Jews over Muslims when he was unable tocontain himself after watching the fighting between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza but even in his apology as the bold faced, underlined passage clearly indicates, he still thinks Jews are more moral than other peoples which, unfortunately, is characteristic of those who consider themselves to be God's "chosen" to be "a light unto the nations" but who, thanks to Zionism, have become more of a blight unto the nations...
"Sicko's" Successful Weekend Puts My Movie in 200 More Cities Beginning Today!, by Michael Moore
The results are in from the weekend -- and they are amazing! "Sicko" more than doubled what industry insiders had predicted it would do for the weekend and, as I predicted, it did indeed have the second largest opening weekend in film history for a documentary (after F911)...
..."We must expel the Arabs and take their places," David Ben Gurion...
KEEPING ON A STEADY COURSE TO APARTHEID, by Jeff Halper
Shu'afat refugees demonstrate for freedom of movement
For all the attention and hysteria the latest events in Gaza have generated since the Hamas “takeover,” for Israel they represent nothing but a minor blip in its inexorable drive towards its own unilateral “solution:” apartheid. Israel’s end-game, explicit and unruffled by the recent turmoil on the ground, is clear. It is laid out in detail in the Convergence Plan” Olmert presented to a joint session of the American Congress in May, 2006, based on Sharon’s plan of “cantonization.” With minor adjustments, it constitutes the plan Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is quietly advancing with the help of Condoleezza Rice, and it is accepted in its entirety by Ehud Barak, the newly-elected leader of the Labor Party, who played a key role in its formulation. The Israeli plan for apartheid is as follows:..
To: All participants in the Civil Society Forum on Sustainable Development, Geneva, 28 –30 June 2007:
The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) is requesting your help to combat the racist policies that destroy the lives of the weakest of 'Israel's citizens': the residents of the "unrecognized" villages...
As the enemies of the Palestinian people have been attacking them on every front -- Israel with its inquisition against Azmi Bishara and with him Palestinian resistance to the racist basis of the Jewish state inside the green line, or Hariri Inc. and its 14 March allies intent on proving the might of the Lebanese army at the expense of Palestinian civilian lives in Nahr Al-Bared, and the continued siege by the Israeli military occupation and its US sponsor of the occupied territories -- the latest attack came from Palestinian collaborators with the enemy: the Fatah leadership abetted by the United States. Indeed the subversion of Middle East democracy has been the mainstay of US policy in the region since the CIA supported the 1949 Hosni Al-Zaim coup that overthrew democracy in Syria. The list after that is long...
THE ISRAEL LOBBY IS RAPIDLY LOSING SUPPORT (Jewish Chronicle)
The power of the Israel lobby in the United States is indisputable.Two decades ago, I witnessed it personally when covering an electionfor the Senate in South Dakota, where the Jewish population isvirtually nonexistent. In this remote corner of the country, a Senatorof Arab-American descent found himself under assault in televisioncommercials because of a vote he had cast against the supply ofequipment for advanced F-16 fighter aircraft to Israel. JamesAbourezk, now an ex-senator, learned to his peril that you take on theAmerican Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), one of Washington'smost effective lobby groups, at your peril...Yet there is growing evidence that the power of Aipac which has justheld its annual gathering in Washington DC may not be asoverwhelming as it once was...
When the Israeli leaders launched their expansionist war in June 1967 they never envisaged that 40 years later they would still be haunted by the consequences. At the time, they were driven by one strategic objective: to end the conflict by seizing all that remained of Palestine and complete the process of ethnic cleansing that started in 1948. They did not realise the resolution of this conflict would take much more than military superiority...
A vital Israeli propaganda strategy document for the period following the war in Iraq
July 1, '07
Michael Chertoff: The Man & His Star-Crossed Past, by Jim Kirwan
Very few Americans, not directly affected by this man of many faces have no idea, of who really directs the duties of the 180,000 government employees in DHS: Duties that this man now holds in his stained and conflicted hands. It seems that the variety of controversies which have paralleled Michael Chertoff's meteoric rise in government have been allowed to languish in the shadows for far too long. If the public does not soon become familiar with who their Director of Homeland Security really is-then they may live to regret that oversight. The details of Michael Chertoff's personal history should have disqualified him for high office: but instead his nomination for this job was approved without objection by the Senate...
World Council of Churches intensifies efforts to end occupation
Sheikh Tayseer Al-Tamimi argues with an Israeli soldier as he and the Archimandrite of the Christian Orthodox Church Attalla Hanna tour the Old City of Hebron in the West Bank, 28 February 2007. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)
From 18 - 20 June in Amman, Jordan, more than 130 representatives from churches and Christian organizations attended a conference entitled "Churches together for peace and justice the Middle East" organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC). The WCC unites more than 340 churches in over a hundred countries and territories, representing about 550 million Christians. "Churches have woken up to the issues in the Middle East like never been before. Another time we woke up is when we fought apartheid in Africa; this is another apartheid," WCC general secretary Reverend Dr. Sam Kobia told The Jordan Times after the conference...
Putin’s Censored Press Conference: The transcript you weren’t supposed to see, by Mike Whitney
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour and a half-long press conference which was attended by many members of the world media. The contents of that meeting---in which Putin answered all questions concerning nuclear proliferation, human rights, Kosovo, democracy and the present confrontation with the United States over missile defense in Europe---have been completely censored by the press. Apart from one brief excerpt which appeared in a Washington Post editorial, (and which was used to criticize Putin) the press conference has been scrubbed from the public record...Putin’s performance was a tour de force. He fielded all of the questions however misleading or insulting. He was candid and statesmanlike and demonstrated a good understanding of all the main issues.
FBI to restrict student freedoms
US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside the United States, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI...
IAF preparing for Iran strike (Jerusalem Post)
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been training on long-range flights, including refueling in mid-flight, in preparation for potential strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.The training program has been taking place for some time but has only been released for publication Friday, the Ma'ariv daily reported..Intelligence assessments received by the defense establishment concur that once Iran passes the point of no return in its nuclear efforts, the entire Middle East will enter a frantic nuclear armament race. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are expected to take the lead should such a scenario become reality..At the end of 2007 the US and Israel are expected to hold a joint assessment to ascertain the influence of economic sanctions against Iran...
The Riddle of Anti Semitism, by Henry Makow Ph.D.
"We're being flooded by Jews," a Canadian immigration officer remarked to his associate. The year was 1951. He was checking the papers of a young couple with a baby..My father understood English. He had narrowly survived the Nazis. This was his welcome to Canada. Luckily it was not a harbinger. We encountered little discrimination and my family prospered in this good country. Nonetheless, my parents wanted to assimilate. They gave their children English sounding names and hardly associated with the Jewish community. The extent of our Jewish observance was that my mother lit the candles on Friday and we celebrated the major holidays. My parents rarely spoke of my grandparents who had perished. They seemed to regard being Jewish as a curse. I did assimilate. It's ironic therefore that my father, now 81, has disowned me because I try to understand anti Semitism other than in simplistic terms. Nothing can justify the Nazi policy of genocide but you would think Jews would want to understand how a catastrophe of this magnitude occurred. How else can we ensure that the mass of ordinary Jews will not be set up as scapegoats again?...
How Can We End the U.S. Government's Pro-Israel Foreign Policy?, by John Spritzler
I will be blunt. It will take a revolution. Here's why..It is plain to see that the corporate/government elite who control the U.S. government, and for whom elections are just a means of legitimizing that control, support the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing with virtually no dissent from their ranks--not a peep. Gentile or Jew, it makes no difference--wealthy and powerful people in the United States all "get it"--Israel is good for them...
Bush's Israeli Lobby Advisors! (NO WAR for Israel)
The reality of the situation is that no one in Washington, whether in the Pentagon (top military brass, joint chiefs, etc) or in Congress, wants this Israeli proxy war against Iraq. Only those connected to the Israeli lobby want this war..It is very important to know the identity of these pro-Israeli officials within the administration in order to understand who is behind this war-mongering and realizing that is serving Israeli interests, not American interests.
Mazin Qumsiyeh's Newsletter: 50 Zionist Lies
Compiling Zionist mendacity, lies and distortions is by necessity a work in progress. It obviously can be rather lengthy, since the lies and mendacity of those who either participated in or still participate in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine goes back for 100 years. I listed below 50 common lies and a link to a page with data that debunk them (as a beginning to prompt more)...
It's official. As the US proceeds with its new world order in the Middle East, the world at large and even space, Russia, resurgent with its oil revenues and booming economy is again taking on the G8 coterie on all fronts. No apologies and no looking back...
Re: Iran regime Drowning in Oil (6/30,07, Boston Globe)
Why now, are all of our media hopping up and down against Iran?..Why does Israel wish to attack Iran? Why are our ships surrounding Iran?..Why is Israel the "only country" in the Middle East allowed to have weapons of mass destruction? Does Israel have more wisdom than the other countries in that area? Who is to judge which country is a 'rogue' country? Israel continues to steal Arab lands and areas in Jerusalem, destroying and then rebuilding for themselves...
Who will save Palestine?, by Sonja Karkar
These days the Hamas acting government and Fatah "emergency government"are sapping the interest from any news story that might report on Israel's criminal deeds inside Gaza and the West Bank. Both these Palestinian enclaves are still under Israel's military occupation - one shunned and isolated by political intrigue and the other apparently working at cooperating with the occupier, and there's the tragedy of it all. Nothing that has happened in the last fortnight has stopped Israel in its tracks. Life for the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is just as bitter and just as terrifying as it ever was only with a new dimension - no one knows whom to believe or if there is a viable Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) left to champion their struggle against Israel's unrelenting land theft, apartheid practices and violent human rights abuses...
June 28, 07
Hollywood's burning interest in the Sudanese civil war has long fascinated me, especially considering that town's tacit acceptance of Zio-America's active destruction of Palestine. If you didn't read this article on Darfur earlier, please do. It's outstanding. It exposes the Zio-neocon motives behind 'liberal' Hollywood's push for humanitarian intervetion in Darfur as well as their phony claims of genocide there. Please circulate widely. -Mark Green
Palestine: Blood Is in the Air, by Ran HaCohen
Five years after His Highness G.W. Bush – president of the United States of America, czar of Afghanistan, emperor of Iraq, democratizer of the Middle East, etc., etc. – launched his "Road Map for Peace in the Middle East," announcing a Palestinian state by 2005, the Israeli public has a new pastime. The public discussion in Israel now revolves around "Three states for two peoples?": that is, should the Jewish state use the Hamas coup in Gaza to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and deal with two Palestinian states, or should Israel keep the two districts connected? Roughly, the right wing supports the former track – based on arguments like "divide and rule," "two states are easier to manipulate than one," etc. – whereas the left wing tends to the latter option, remembering Israel's obligation in the Oslo accords to treat the two districts as one political entity and airing arguments like "one enemy is better than two," "two states would compete with each other in hatred," etc...
Answering my critics, by GERSHON BASKIN (Jerusalem Post)
Since February 2005, I have been writing this column in the Jerusalem Post every other week. The talkbacks to my articles which also appear on jpost.com are consistently angry, aggressive, and opposed to almost everything I write. The responses to my repeated calls for taking steps toward peace with our neighbors have been complete rejection..The basis of opposition comes from those who question the very existence of the Palestinian people. Others, who might be willing to recognize that Palestinians do exist, are not wiling to accept the reality of their presence on any part of the Land of Israel. Others who might be willing to accept the presence of Palestinians in some part of Eretz Israel are not willing to accept the possibility of equal rights for them within the State of Israel or even in areas that are under the control of the State of Israel...
Does the Israeli Tail Wag the American Dog?, by Kathleen and Bill Christison
If the United States is unable to distinguish the world’s or its own real needs from those of another state and that state’s lobby, then it simply cannot say that it always acts in its own best interests.
...A quarter century ago, the executive director of AIPAC —the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—established an analytical unit inside the organization to write in-depth advocacy papers for policymakers. The year was 1981, the president was Ronald Reagan, and AIPAC had just lost a hard-fought battle in Congress over the sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia. The AIPAC leader was an energetic former congressional aide named Thomas Dine, who used the setback to build AIPAC into a formidable political force. Over the next few years, Dine quadrupled AIPAC’s grassroots membership as well as its budget and aggressively expanded contacts with Congress and policymakers. He set out to supply politicians with analyses geared toward advancing Israeli interests, in the stated belief that anyone who wrote papers read by policymakers would effectively “own” the policymakers...
Profiteering from humanitarianism: Darfur advocacy group fires its executive director
June 2, 2007 (NEW YORK) — Even as advocacy groups attained the seeming triumph of President Bush’s new sanctions against Sudan, the organization that helped bring the conflict in Darfur to the world’s attention is in upheaval, firing its executive director, reorganizing its board and rethinking its strategies..At the heart of the shake-up are questions of whether the former executive director of the organization, the Save Darfur Coalition, wisely used a sudden influx of money from a few anonymous donors in an advertising blitz to push for action...But Save Darfur has gotten into hot water with aid groups helping the refugees of the conflict...
Another Professor Under Attack by the Zionists: Support Ward Churchill
The Regents of the University of Colorado will meet in late July or early August, when the campus is all but vacant, to determine Ward Churchill's fate. Natsu Saito has written a synopsis of the relevant issues related to the case including links to supporting documentation. She requests you send a statement opposing Prof. Churchill's dismissal to the CU Board of Regents.
Israel is determined to dig its own grave, by Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
What would it take to persuade Israel to rethink its attitude towards its Arab neighbours - and primarily towards the Palestinians? The Hamas victory in Gaza is surely a clear signal that an Israeli change of direction is urgently needed..All efforts of Israel to break the democratically-elected Hamas government have failed. Its policies of boycott, siege and starvation, of bombing and shelling, of extra-judicial murder, of withholding tax revenues, of the systematic destruction of Palestinian institutions have served only to create a time-bomb of hunger, despair and defiance on Israel's flank...
Zyklon B on the US Border, by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Zyklon B came to El Paso in the 1920s. In 1929, for example, a U.S. Public Health Service officer, J.R. Hurley, ordered $25 worth of the material--hydrocyanic acid in pellet form--as a fumigating agent for use at the El Paso delousing station, where Mexicans crossed the border from Juárez. Zyklon, developed by DEGESCH (the German Vermin-combating Corporation) was made in varying strengths, with Zyklon C, D and E representing gradations in potency and price. As Raul Hilberg describes it in The Destruction of the European Jews...
The Roots of Zionist Racism, by Lenni Brenner
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil): It was anti-Semitism - alone - that generated Zionism. Herzl could not ground his movement in anything positively Jewish. Although he sought the support of the rabbis, he personally was not devout. He had no special concern for Palestine, the ancient homeland; he was quite eager to accept the Kenya Highlands, at least on a temporary basis. He had no interest in Hebrew; he saw his Jewish state as a linguistic Switzerland. He had to think of race, for it was in the air; the Teutonic anti-Semites were talking of the Jews as a race, but he soon discarded the doctrine...
Dozens made homeless as police demolish Bedouin houses (Electronic Intifada)
[Editor's Note: These are "Israeli Citizens"]
A woman and her child standing in front of their demolished home in Atir. (Shabtai Gold/IRIN)
ATIR (NEGEV DESERT), 26 June 2007 (IRIN) - At least 20 houses in two Bedouin-Arab villages were destroyed on 25 June by Israeli security forces, leaving over 150 people homeless..Some 1,500 police and special forces converged on the two small villages, which together have a population of about 1,000 people from the al-Qi'an family, and conducted the demolitions.."The children went to school and the men to work. Only the women stayed home," said Azam al-Qi'an, aged 16, whose home was destroyed...
The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary ... Reality has refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete failure."..But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American politicians, including Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush, appear soot-free. On the contrary. Over the past fortnight they have been looking and sounding even more smug than usual...
Gaza: from economic to humanitarian disaster, by Sonja Karkar
Gaza's humanitarian crisis began long before the world decided that the Palestinians had to be punished for voting in the Hamas government..Since Israel's occupation in 1967 of the little land left to the Palestinians, Gaza has suffered miserably. Israel did everything in the 25 years before Oslo (1993) to shut off opportunities for economic growth and made sure that Gaza's infrastructure remained undeveloped. Despite the optimism of the Oslo Accords, Israel's vice-like grip on Gaza continued and the people found themselves increasingly denied freedom of movement which again impacted on their economic development. Unable to produce or invest, the Palestinians became more and more dependent on imports from Israel...
The War that Destroyed America, by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
In a maddening repetition of history, the young warfighters of the United States, along with those of its coalition partners, find themselves in battle with an amorphous opponent in a global counter-insurgency campaign managed by paranoid policy makers who see themselves as the enlightened sons of God. As the illegitimate and extremist government of the United States prepares to expend another generation of its youth for power, money and resources thousands of kilometers from home, they are negligently and criminally allowing the infrastructure, health and welfare of the United States to deteriorate. As America wages World War III against its 21st century barbarians—the Taliban and Al Qaeda (the Visigoths and Huns?)—in a war that may well see the use of nuclear weapons, the American Empire seems doomed to duplicate the concluding events of 476 A.D. And it’s not Al Qaeda’s 5,000 militants that will destroy the USA, it’s the current “selected” government that will sacrifice the future of the world’s greatest experiment in freedom on the altar of fascism...
Open Door Policy: A strange thing happened on the way to the war
As the winter of 2002 approached, I was increasingly amazed at the success of the propaganda campaign being waged by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and neoconservative mouthpieces at the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal. I speculated about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Phil-Dick-style minority report on the grandiose Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney vision of some future Middle East where peace, love, and democracy are brought about by pre-emptive war and military occupation...
SAS complained about US treatment of prisoners
New
Zealand SAS forces deployed in Afghanistan complained about
the handling of prisoners they had captured and handed over
to the United States, the Herald has been told..The elite
soldiers were so concerned they called a meeting of other
special forces at Kandahar base...
The Al-Arian family, stars of Norway
OSLO, Norway -- Before daylight on the day that marked four years of Dr. Sami Al-Arian's imprisonment, his eldest daughter Laila and wife Nahla were guests on the popular Norwegian television program God morgen Norge (Good Morning Norway). But during a week in which she was whisked from one reporter to another, that show wasn't even the most watched television program on which Nahla appeared...
Palestine: Freedom Is What They Want, by Charley Reese
You might recall how President George W. Bush was wont to wax eloquent on the virtues of democracy and how often he spoke of spreading democracy to the Middle East..You might not recall that there was a free and fair election in the occupied territories last year. Palestinian voters overwhelmingly chose a Hamas government over a slate of candidates offered by Fatah, a secular Palestinian organization..They didn't make this choice out of religious beliefs or because they preferred "terrorists" to politicians. They made the choice because they were fed up with the corruption and brutality of the Fatah faction...
Report from Mazin Qumsiyeh - June 25, '07
June 20 was International Refugee day and the Hartford public library had a day of events...What most people did not know is that the largest two refugee populations in the world today are Palestinians (about 6 million) and Iraqis (about 3 million), both created and perpetuated thanks to US government foreign policy that is tailored to serve special interests. A book on display by the previous UN high Commissioner For Refugees based on her 10 years at the UN (1990-2000) mentions Palestine only on page 345 and only to say that political considerations made it difficult to deal with other refugees including Palestinians.