September 30, 2009 Don't Israel's nuclear weapons count?, by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown | The Independent Netanyahu has what he wants to keep up the idea of his plucky, vulnerable little state ...Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe's heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations...On Thursday the US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can't point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a vast stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now... Read article... Another War in the Works: America Is Led And Informed By Liars, by Paul Craig Roberts Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed...Just as the factual reports from the weapons inspectors in Iraq were ignored by the Bush Regime, the factual reports from the IAEA are ignored by the Obama Regime. Like the Bush Regime, the Middle East policy of the Obama Regime is based in lies and deception. Who is the worst enemy of the American people, Iran or the government in Washington and the media whores who serve it? Read article... Netanyahu’s UN Speech - The Pathology of Evil, by Gilad Atzmon Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech at the UN is a major insight into the Israeli’s mentality, psyche and logic. In his speech, Netanyahu gives air to his genocidal inclinations, he brings to light the Israeli supremacy but he also allows us to detect some shaky and vulnerable spots at the heart of the Israeli national narrative. It seems as if the ‘discredited’ Iranian president Ahmadinejad has managed to succeed after all...two questions must be answered once and for all: how is it that the Jews, who suffered so much during that war, managed to get themselves involved in a colossal racist crime against the Palestinians (1948 Nakba) just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz? How is it that the Israeli leadership, that happens to be so sensitive to Jewish suffering, manages to neglect the pain they inflict on millions of Palestinians?... Read article... September 29, 2009 Please take action: Free Mohammad Othman  Mohammad was returning from one of his trip to Norway, during which he met with senior officials, including Norwegian Finance Minister Kristen Halvorsen. This is not the first time Palestinian human rights defenders have been arrested after trips abroad. Recently, Muhammad Srour, an eye witness at the UN Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, was arrested on his way back from Geneva. This arrest was a clear act of reprisal against Srour for speaking out about Israel’s violations of international law. Arresting Palestinians as they return from travel is yet another Israeli tactic to try to silence Palestinian human rights defenders. It complements the overall policy of isolation of the Palestinian people behind checkpoints, walls and razor wire. Israel resorts to intimidation and harassment in the hope of discouraging resistance. This must not be allowed to pass in silence. We need you to take action, to put the pressure on Israel to release Mohammad and to pressure your own government to intervene. See blog... On Facebook... The Next Victim?: Pakistan On The Edge of The Precipice, by Shahid Siddiqi | Axix of Logic  "American interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs reaches such an ominous level that the country seems to be run by an American under secretary of state or envoy, Richard Holbrook, rather than its elected representatives."... September 28, 2009 Gaza peace protester is imprisoned in own home, by Jonathan Cook | The National Read article... Letter from Mazin 9/28/09 Today, Bethlehem University was forced to close because the Israeli authorities imposed a "closure" of the West Bank because of Yom Kippur holiday. As our students and faculty from Jerusalem cannot get to Bethlehem (a mere 5 miles away) because of this closure, the educational activities cannot be carried out. Also all Palestinians who are lucky enough to have permits to cross into Palestinian Jerusalem (for work, education etc) are also thus forced to take a day off. In the meantime, the repression does not take days off. Israeli authorities are very busy in continued colonial activities from ethnic cleansing to stealing water (80% of the West Bank water is taken by Israel), to kidnapping and holding political prisoners, to starving Gaza, and to violence against people and against nature. Israeli sewage still flows down the valleys of Salfit while Israel forbids Palestinians from building sewage treatment plants. News today is that Israel has told hundreds of citizens in East Jerusalem that they will cut off the water to their homes (which used to be a mere one cubic meter per person per month, barely enough to drink and cook let alone take showers). The forms of ethnic cleansing continue to morph... Palestinians and Israelis Follow Thoreau, but Is Anyone Watching?, by Neve Gordon | Antiwar Sometime in 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he refused to pay his taxes. This was his way of opposing the Mexican-American War as well as the institution of slavery. A few years later he published the essay "Civil Disobedience," which has since been read by millions of people, including many Israelis and Palestinians. Kobi Snitz read the book. He is an Israeli anarchist who is currently serving a 20-day sentence for refusing to pay a 2,000 shekel fine... Read article... September 27, 2009 Will Israel Fall in Five Years?, by Jeff Gates | Palestine Chronicle “The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.” -- Albert Einstein, signatory to Letters to the Editor, New York Times, December 4, 1948. Online reports of a study by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cast doubt over the survival of Israel beyond the next two decades. Regardless of the validity of the report, with what is now known about the costs in blood and treasure that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has imposed on the U.S., its key ally, Israel could fall within five years. For more than six decades, American support for Israel has relied on the ability of pro-Israelis to dominate U.S. media, enabling Tel Aviv to put a positive spin on even its most extreme behavior, including its recent massacre in Gaza. With access to online news coverage, that Zionist bias is becoming apparent and the real facts transparent... [Wecan't just sit around and wait for this to happen. The existence of theState of Israel is the foremost threat to peace and justice in thisworld, and only the international community can eliminate it. I don'tspeak of the major world governments - barring Russia and China theyare all bought and paid for by the Zionists. Only popular pressure, theexpression of the conscience of ordinary people working together willbring the beast down. Such an awakening will not only save millions oflives, but will free everyone from the ZioNazi hypnotic spell. And thepeople of the United States might just get their country back. - theEditor] Read article... Why I threw the shoe, by Muntazer al-Zaidi | The Guardian I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents  I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot. Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country... Read article... What Does Holocaust Denial Really Mean?, by Daniel McGowan | PTT  In April 2007 the European Union agreed to set jail sentences up to three years for those who deny or trivialize the Holocaust. More recently, in response to the remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson, the Pope has proclaimed that Holocaust denial is “intolerable and altogether unacceptable.” But what does Holocaust denial really mean?... [There is no possibility of stopping the Zionist juggernaut unless people are willing to take a look at what actually happened. That is why the Holycause is defended so fanatically by the Inquisition, to prevent people from doing just that. Not surprisingly, close analysis demonstrates that it it is probably more myth than history. - the Editor] Read article... September 26, 2009 U.S. Interests vs The Jewish State, by Jeff Gates | The People's Voice  Barack Obama's recent conduct at the U.N. removed all remaining doubt as to Israeli influence inside this latest U.S. presidency. When he uttered the phrase "the Jewish state of Israel," he provided precisely the provocation required to ensure that peace in the Middle East will continue to be deferred. When, in May 1948, Christian-Zionist Harry Truman agreed to recognize an enclave of Jewish-Zionist extremists as a nation state, he struck out "Jewish state" and wrote the "state of Israel." Despite assurances from Zionist lobbyist Chaim Weizmann that Israel would be a democracy, Truman feared the Zionist state might become what it became: a racist theocracy committed to an expansionist agenda that endangers U.S. interests in the region... Read article... On Spurious Israeli Claims of "Self-Defense": Evidence that Israeli/Zionist Leaders Want Jews to Die at the Hands of Apparent Anti-Semites | newdemocracyworld.org ...One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me... ...David Ben-Gurion, argued: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."... ...Zionist sabotage of rescue efforts was an established policy as early as 1942. In a letter to the Times (of London), June 6, 1961, Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld, Chairman of the wartime Rescue Committee established by the Chief Rabbi of Britain, describes how the Zionist leadership in Great Britain opposed efforts to rescue European Jews from the Holocaust... Read reports... See also The Anti-Semitism of Zionism's Leaders: They Even Opposed Rescuing Jews During the Holocaust http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Zionist%20Leaders.htm The End of Free Speech?: Criminalizing Criticism of Israel, by Paul Craig Roberts | Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide. To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews. Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House. As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands... Read article... Peace Talks, A Poem by Samah Sabawi  Let's negotiate Let's have a conference, a summit, a debate A multifaith dialogue to eliminate hate They'll call us men of peace And after our love fest We can issue a joint release Of how we talk Let's talk But not about ethnic cleansing Forget Dier Yassin Don't speak of apartheid Or the destruction of Jennin Be blind to the pain in Gaza The hunger, the disease The rubble, the fires The uprooted trees Sewerage floods and darkness Drones and the Siege Most of all DON'T MENTION THE RIGHTS OF REFUGEES When we talk Let's talk Let our words float in the air Devoid of meaning or clarity We'll establish our own facts on the ground And you will be paid your salary Never before has talking of peace Caused so much damage and agony Yet still we talk So let's talk let's negotiate We can have a conference, a summit, a debate A multifaith dialogue to eliminate hate We'll shake hands and smile And make the six o'clock news For supporting the peace process Between Arabs and Jews And we will only talk Source... September 25, 2009 There are many people, "progressive" Zionists included, who loudly object to the Occupation in the Palestinian territories, but see no problem with the continued existence of an Israel that privileges Jews over all others who happen to live there, particularly the Muslim, Christian and other non-Jewish" citizens." These people are referred to by Zionists as the "Arab-Israelis," but they are, of course, Palestinians. This population also includes a small number of Jews, people whose residence in Palestine pre-dated the Zionist immigration that started in the late 19th century. Those among them - and they may constitute the majority - who never bought into the Zionist ideology and are opposed to the State of Israel are treated pretty much the same as the other Palestinians, as less than human, untermenschen. This may come as a surprise to many, but it is perfectly understandable when one realizes that the Zionist project, although initially proposed and marketed by Western Europeans, became in due course an entirely Ashkenazi endeavor dominated by Eastern Europeans, the kind of people despised by the highly educated, cosmopolitan Viennese Jews like Theodor Herzl. These Ashkenazim (my ancestors) spoke Yiddish as their first language, no matter which country they happened to have been born in. The form of Zionism they promulgated has become known as "political Zionism," dominated by the followers of Vladimir Jabotinski, the father of 20th century Zionism, and the progenitor of the Likud Party. The opposition Labor Party stems from Ben Gurion, but the two parties are like the Republicrats in the U.S., two sides of the same coin. Political Zionism is a far cry from the idealistic form that refined, cosmopolitan Jews like Herzl and his Western European (and North American) admirers thought that they had bought into. That is why the vast majority of them became disillusioned with the whole project long before Kristallnacht and then WWII. People like Einstein, Freud, Hannah Arendt, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber smelled a rat, and they made it clear that they had no interest in supporting the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. This was, in fact, the prevailing sentiment among the vast majority of Western European and North American Jews. All of that began to change in the late 30's and by the time of the liberation of the camps in 1945 this vociferous opposition faded away among Jewish liberals, progressives, socialists and humanists. European fascism of the Italian and German varieties ensured the success of political Zionism, the mirror image of Nazism, but with "the Jewish People" now cast as being simultaneously "the victims" and the "Master Race," just like their role models, the Nazis, before them. History not only repeats itself - it plays practical jokes. Being against the Occupation is easy. After all, it violates numerous international conventions, entails daily crimes against humanity and just plain stinks to heaven. With a modicum of imagination, one can see that the Israelis, with their Matrix of Control, have erected a number of open air prisons, virtual concentration camps, but with the guards outside. So convenient - prisons in which the prisoners have to fend for themselves for the necessities of life - food, water, electricity - all of it supplied or witheld at the whim of the wardens who watch from a distance, utilizing collaborators and the latest in high-tech surveillance gear. Occasionaly, usually prompted by some act of desperation by a powerless people (a suicide bombing or a stray Qassam rocket, the modern equivalent of sling-shots), or merely a rumor that something's going on, they make periodic forays inside to "send a message," arrest "troublemakers," usually using Palestinian children as human shields and to touch off whatever booby traps might have been placed along the way. Occasionally, "sending a message" takes the form of a full-fledged massacre, as happened recently in Gaza. It's utterly despicable, reeking of the most egregious racism imaginable without even the slightest regard for human rights. But from the Israeli point of view the Palestinians aren't really human - they are "them," "the other," "the enemy." However, there are those perfectly aware of the facts who still cling to the doomed fantasy of a Jewish State. They are people like Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who scrupulously chronicled the Nakba, but continues to support the existence of the Jewish State, even if that entails the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Likewise the old warhorse Uri Avnery, one of the most decent and courageous human beings I know of, who has heroically spoken out for decades against the obscenities perpetrated by Israel, yet clings to the notion that Israel could and should somehow survive as a Jewish nation, no matter how truncated. And then there is the army of so-called "progressives," who think likewise, and avidly support an imagined, reformed Israel while protesting against the Occupation. These people have co-opted any possibility that the world could easily come together to put an end to apartheid Israel as it did white supremacist South Africa. The "Separation Wall" introduces an additional level of surrealism. Its similarity to the ghetto walls that the European Jews were so familiar with, that in a curious way provided a sense of comfort, familiarity and security to their residents - whatever the intentions of the builders may have been - has been noted by many. The transparently silly notion that it would "keep out terrorists" is far less convincing than the realization that it was a familiar reflex of the ancient paranoia - a tangible, if pathetic, defense against the goyim of whichever land the Jews were trespassing in. Always the trespassers, always the strangers in a strange land, doomed to stave off, for as long as possible, the inevitable rage their presence sooner or later engendered, the restrictions, the pogroms, and then, like clockwork, the expulsions. Behind the bellicose, militaristic, macho aggression of the Israelis - the arrogance and the gratuitous cruelty - lie the old fears, the inescapable paranoia, the unvoiced fear that "the Chosen Ones" were really chosen to suffer, and that sooner or later the ax would fall - as it surely will, because even the Zionists can't repeal the law of cause and effect. Who was it, Einstein, who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result? But let's assume that, miraculus miraculorum, the Israelis decide to back off (or, much more likely, are pressured to by the Obama administration and/or other forces currently percolating just beneath the surface), and, having completed their Apartheid wall, agree to remain behind it, content in their air-conditioned ghetto. At this point in time such an action would involve an actual commitment to allowing the creation of at least some facsimile of a Palestinian State on the other side of the wall, to somehow overseeing the evacuation of some half million Israelis from the West Bank (which would entail the forcible eviction of tens of thousands of fanatical settlers), to giving up control of all of the major water sources, to allowing the Palestinians the freedom to come and go as they see fit, and so on and so forth. When looked at closely, ending the Occupation at this juncture would necessitate unimaginable difficulties, not the least of which would be giving up the Zionist fantasy of Greater Israel, from the river to the sea. I don't speak of the grander version, meaning from the Euphrates to the Nile, but merely from the Jordan River to the Med. In fact, it would entail giving up on Zionism altogether, because ethnocentric tribal fascism has an internal logic to it, a compulsion to conquer and expand or die - perpetual war is a necessary precondition for maintaining the dominance of its ruling class, whose very existence is predicated on doing battle with and defeating "the enemy," over and over again. Such a process inevitably plays itself out in defeat, as Alexander and the Macedonians discovered, as did the Romans, and most recently the Nazis. The Israeli power elite may be very smart and knowledgeable, technologically and militarily superior, but they are clearly ignoring Santayana's maxim that those who don't know history are bound to repeat it. No people are guiltier of that mistake than the Jews, who after centuries of getting themselves expelled from country after country, are setting themselves up for something that will make even what happened to them under Hitler look like a cakewalk. When we talk about Zionism we are discussing an ideology, a set of ideas, narratives and myths that together constitute the political world view of a those who self-identify as belonging to the group professing that ideology, in this instance "the Jewish people." Although ideologies may present themselves as being universally true, they are generally based on some sort of group identification: tribal, ethnic (racial), national, religious, caste, and most recently, economic status. There is always an "Us" vs. "Them." What after all is Zionism, stripped of its racial romanticism and mythology? It's essentially the last gasp of the same old European colonialism that has characterized the "modern" period of history, during which various European powers came to dominate the political, technological and economic landscape of the planet. Zionism evolved as a political ideology and a strategy to solve the problem that European Jews found themselves in, stateless and dispersed following the predations of the Mongols under Genghis Khan and the subsequent collapse of the Khazarian Empire. Their status pretty much everywhere in Europe was that of a despised minority (for perfectly understandable reasons too complex to go into here). In response, they developed a tribal mythology, based mostly on some stories in the Hebrew bible, in which they played the role of "the Chosen People," heroes of an epic in which they were constantly set upon, persecuted and threatened with destruction, but somehow feisty enough to survive. In other words, one could say that they developed a collective case of paranoid schizophrenia, according to which they (simultaneously the Elect of God and His victims) were constantly under attack by superior forces, but could imagine a way to escape and secure for themselves the sense of security they so desperately sought, a ghetto with walls strong and durable enough to keep the wolf perpetually at bay. All this came to a head in the 19th Century, when the idea occurred to Theodor Herzl that the way out of this depressingly familiar pattern would be for the Jews to have a nation state of their own. This happened, not coincidentally, at the height of European Colonialism. Based on this rather simple notion an entire ideology had to be constructed in order to sell the idea, not only to the major players themselves, but to the so-called Jewish people. In order to do that, and this is just one aspect of a very complicated and not very funny joke, the "Jewish People" had to be invented. This is the subject of the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand's book, The Invention of the Jewish People. The forthcoming English translation (it will be available on October 19th) is eagerly anticipated . We can leave aside the fact that the notion that a Jewish colony could and should be planted in Palestine was actually a hare-brained scheme concocted in the first decade of the 19th Century in the British Foreign Office, where the idea soon died a quiet and unlamented death. And nevermind that gathering the Jews together in a ghetto constructed in the very epicenter of a people understandably indisposed to being dispossessed might bring about precisely the fate that the Zionists were and are so terrified of. If one roots around in the online repository called "Zionist Quotes" one can find the intellectual building blocks that created modern Israel.They reveal that very process of inventing the necessary ideology, as well as the development of an overall strategy for going about the creation of the colonialist-settler nation state. Contained therein are numerous reflections about the nature of "the Jewish People" and Jewish identity that would have "the Inquisition" (those who maintain the Zionist orthodoxy) in a characteristic uproar about "antisemitism" and "self-hating Jews." They largely saw themselves as outcasts, almost like lepers who have decided they themselves would build a leper colony wherein they could be quarantined and thus left alone. It becomes clear from these texts that the early Zionists almost reveled in guilt and self-hatred, something that is so characteristic of Jewish literature, and lies, shadow-like, at the root of modern, triumphalist Zionism. As Karin Friedemann points out, "The Palestinians’ ancestors created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, followed Jesus, wrote the New Testament, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud. The Palestinian people constitute the living link to the earliest beginnings of the heritage from the Torah and Gospel. Zionists are almost pitiable, for they are so ashamed of their own history that they have usurped one belonging to another people." There is a category of political ideologies that Zionism fits perfectly into. It is called fascism. Although the dictionaries define fascism as the particular ideology espoused by Hitler and Mussolini in the 20th century, the roots of fascism go back to the very first emergence in human history of what could be termed political thought . Those familiar with the great spiritual traditions are aware that the principal obstacle to human wisdom and happiness is considered to be our habit of putting our own interests before those of others, as opposed to some variation of the Golden Rule, the point where all wisdom traditions, even theistic religions, agree. The opposite, neurotic tendency derives from the mistaken belief that we are solid, continuous individuals, self-existing and autonomous. Hence the notions of "self," or "soul," as well as belief systems that inculcate the notion that God (a religious metaphorical term that solidifies and embodies all that is not "me") is at least on "our" side. All wisdom paths teach that dissolving this mistaken belief in the existence of "ego" is the only way of arriving at any sort of genuine sanity. What is not talked about so much is the problem of "group ego," which is essentially the same psychological phenomenon, but applied to a collection of people with whom we closely identify rather than just our individual selves. This propensity manifests itself first in our close identification with our family and then extends out to include our felt bond with friends, neighbors, town or city, and so on, until it includes such collective concepts as our co-religionists, our gender, nation, race, class and so forth. This is the Us and Them duality that mirrors the basic duality of Self and Other. It is the underlying rationale for all wars and acts of officially sanctioned aggression against the "Other." Consequently, building a sane human society is not possible without conquering this tendency to elevate and privilege "our" group over others. Psychologically speaking, rooting for the Red Sox or the Yankees involves the same psycho-dynamics that lead to deadly riots in soccer stadiums, and on to wars of aggression. It is neither good nor bad, rather it is simply a stage to be experienced and then left behind on the path to maturity, a condition that is characterized by, among other things, the awareness that all beings are connected and interdependent. The development of both individual and group egos are artifacts of a natural psychological process. Just as the butterfly is the final form following embryo, larva and pupa; and the lotus flower follows seed, root and stem, human beings undergo a similar metamorphosis. Conventional political views are characteristic of an adolescent stage of life that primarily concerns itself with one's perceived individual and group interests. Such views naturally clash with how others perceive their interests, and the results are obvious when we watch the news. The conditions created by invoking the "I" as opposed to "You," or the "We" as opposed to "Them," creates a battleground wherein the destructive emotions of passion, aggression, ignorance, arrogance and envy are given full play. Clearly, human society as a whole has not yet evolved beyond this stage of social development. But the possibility is there, just as the seed prefigures the flower. A number of people, those who have embodied wisdom from many places and traditions, have shown the way, though few follow. The path to a genuine "adulthood" is difficult, particularly from within the lunatic asylum where we find ourselves, but it is traversible. What we have been talking about is fascism, the ideological underpinning of the Jewish State. There is also a religious underpinning (not Judaism - the Jewish Zionists, after all, are and always have been overwhelmingly secular), and that is the Holycause (not to say that Jewish religious fundamentalism doesn't play a part). The ideology and the religion are symbiotic, as has always been the case in human societies. Church and State reinforce and support one another. The Holycause is remarkably similar to the underlying myth of Christianity, that someone, after undergoing unimaginable agony, died for our sins. In the case of the Holycause, six million Jews died so that Israel could be born. Never mind that the six million number goes back to 1912 (a vague guess at the number of Jews in Europe at the time) and only later became attached to the Jewish victims of the Third Reich (one of many disputed or easily refutable "facts" enumerated by the "official" version of the Holocaust, but woe betide any truthseekers who dare to undertake a critical analysis of what actually happened - you will be hauled before the ever vigilant officers of the Holycause Inquisition, and betimes taken to the rack). We are talking about a religion and therefore facts are fungible, as their meaning is symbolic rather than historical. And never mind that the actual survivors of that catastrophe who now live in Israel are a despised underclass (one third of them living in dire poverty), treated with utter contempt by the native born Israelis who are so fiercely proud of their manly, heroic battle against the fearsome foe. It is not the real victims who matter (the Zionists willingly sacrificed hundreds of thousands of European Jews in pursuit of their goal), but the symbolism of their victimhood. The Zionists remain in total denial. As Saree Makdisi points out, they are able to blithely build a "Museum of Tolerance" above the graves of a centuries old Palestinian cemetary, the people they have been assiduously trying to exterminate, without showing any signs of cognitive dissonance. He refers to it as a horizontal wall, to complement the vertical Separation Wall being constructed in Jerusalem. The whole process of creating an impregnable ghetto, bristling with overpowering firepower, only invites destruction. This is, indeed, the goal of Christian Zionism, the cult of the Rapture, which foresees the end of the world and the final elimination of the Jews. They are perhaps even more psychotic than the Jewish Zionists. One could say, in the poetic language of the Abrahamic tradition, that the State of Israel is the Devil's masterpiece. There is really only one way to resolve the dilemma posed by the existence of the Jewish state in humanity's heartland, and that is to change the existing configuration, a Rube Goldberg political contraption designed to maintain a Jewish majority in a putative Western-style democracy. The obvious alternative is the gold standard of contemporary nation states, a secular, pluralistic democracy consisting of all those who have an obvious right to be there (this includes all of the Palestinians, wherever they happen to be currently residing, as is clearly enshrined in international law), but does not necessarily include recent immigrants, particularly the fanatics from Brooklyn who form the majority of the illegal settlers (well, they're all illegal, but what is meant here is illegal even according to Israeli law), nor would it include recently arrived terrorists like the Moldavian Avigdor Lieberman. Anyone not born there would be subject to deportation. To use a well known phrase, this would entail wiping Israel off the map. That would be a great boon to the mapmakers, as the Israelis have always refused to define their borders, pending the establishment of Greater Israel. This can be brought about through a purely political process that doesn't require the spilling of one drop of blood. It would be like extinguishing a raging fire that has gotten totally out of control and is threatening to consume much of the world. Yes, they do have nuclear weapons, and they aren't shy about what they call "the Sampson option." There is no use in hoping that governments will solve this problem - the Zionists have managed to get their hands on all the levers of power in most of what is called the First World, particularly in the U.S., the heart of the Empire. Only ordinary people, and most particularly those Jews who haven't fallen under the hypnotic spell of Zionist hasbara - by fearlessly proclaiming truth to power - have any hope of waking up slumbering humanity and avoiding the seemingly inevitable. Zionists take heed - to quote a poetic metaphor from the bible, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I shall repay." Or, as it is expressed in post-modernist America, "what goes around comes around." Justice This Time Around?: The Goldstone Report and Israeli Impunity, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch Read article... How Low Will Israel Stoop to Win the Propaganda War?, by Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, has produced a revised training manual to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war, keep their ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that their crimes are necessary and conform to “shared values” between Israel and the civilised West... Read article... September 24, 2009 Why are they walking out? | Vineyard of the Saker Predictably, a group of pro-Zionist countries has staged a walkout yesterday at the UN during Iranian President Ahmadinejad's speech. Here are the words which triggered this walkout: "Howcan one imagine that the inhuman policies in Palestine may continue; toforce the entire population of a country out of their homeland for morethan 60 years by resorting to force and coercion; to attack them withall types of arms and even prohibited weapons; to deny them theirlegitimate right of self-defense, while much to the chagrin of theinternational community calling the occupiers "the peacelovers," andportraying the victims as terrorists. How can the crimes of theoccupiers against defenseless women and children and destruction oftheir homes, farms, hospitals and schools be supported unconditionallyby certain governments, and at the same time, the oppressed men andwomen be subject to genocide and heaviest economic blockade beingdenied of their basic needs, food, water and medicine. They are noteven allowed to rebuild their homes which were destroyed during the22-day barbaric attacks by the Zionist regime while the winter isapproaching. Whereas the aggressors and their supporters deceitfullycontinue their rhetoric in defense of human rights in order to putothers under pressure. It is no longer acceptable that a small minoritywould dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of theworld by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery,and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and theU.S., to attain its racist ambitions."... Read blog... THE SHMINISTIM TOUR: Israeli women speak their conscience • 9/12 to 10/10/2009  Maya Wind and Netta Mishly both signed the 2008 Shministim Letter: a declaration by Israeli high school students that they would not enlist in the IDF to occupy Palestinian territories and rule over Palestinian life. Since military service is mandatory for Israeli Jews upon completing high school, Maya, Netta, and many of the dozens of teenagers who signed the letter have been sentenced to military prison, sometimes for multiple terms. Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace are excited to be organizing a nationwide tour through the United States this Fall, in which these two women recount why they refused, what they have experienced as a result, and what it all means... Go to whywerefuse.org... Australians for Palestine | Today's Front Page Obama concession spells end for peace, by Michael Shaik  Obama’s peace effort has failed but our struggle continues, by Ali Abunimah  Zyara Palestine 2009 – A visit to Palestine (Video) Dividing war spoils, by Abu Sitta  Israeli drive to prevent Jewish girls dating Arabs, by Jonathan Cook | The National A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counsellors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and “rescue” them. The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate – and little discussed – initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls... September 23, 2009 Letter from Mazin | 9/23/09 1) A call to join a large gathering of students, faculty and staff to promote boycott, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) at academic institutions. 2) An action call for the release of our friend and nonviolent activist Mohammed Othman. 3) Why the Goldstone report matters, by Richard Falk, and a call to action from the US Campaign to End the Occupation, 4) two Jewish songwriters on Palestine, 5) A rough poem I wrote after the Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas meeting titled “We are angry” Read Mazin's letter... September 22, 2009 Saree Makdisi lecture 16 Sep, 09 On 16 September 2009, UCLA Professor Saree Makdisi gave his lecture “Jerusalem: The Occupation of Memory” at the University of Melbourne. The lecture was organised by Australians for Palestine/Women for Palestine in memory of his uncle the late Edward Said...For all those people who were unable to attend Professor Saree Makdisi’s lecture, we bring you the complete recording of that evening... Listen to talk... Robert Fisk Lashes Out at West in Middle East (Video) Watch... That "experts" from the "Foreign Policy Community" endorse more war is about as surprising -- and as relevant -- as former CIA Directors banding together to decide that they oppose the prosecution of CIA agents. The only event that would be news is if a group of people drawn from that "community" ever did anything other than endorse more war [and in the few instances where one hears war hesitation from them, it's always on strategic grounds ("we may not be able to achieve our mission") and never on legal, moral or humanitarian grounds ("it's really not morally or legally justifiable to slaughter enormous numbers of innocent human beings under these circumstances, or to bomb, invade and occupy a country that isn't attacking us or even able to attack us")... Read article... West Bank occupation poses the real threat to Israel | The Age Forgive me for being confused, but exactly what are the clear and present dangers facing the State of Israel? According to Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations Gabriella Shalev, her government’s main goal at this week’s UN General Assembly meeting is to show the world how dangerous Iran is. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to give what his aides say will be a “dramatic” speech to the UN on Thursday, Shalev said the Iranian threat would be the main focus. “We know Iran is a dangerous country,” Shalev said on Monday. “We stress and we emphasize that Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it’s a global threat.”...Last Friday, according to Jewish New Year’s tradition, Barak gave an interview to Israel’s biggest selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Instead of the usual palaver about the threats facing Israel, Barak surprised his questioners with this frank admission. “Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel,”... Read article... Syria: Israel dumping N-waste in Golan | Press TV Syria charges Israel with dumping nuclear waste near the Syrian border, in territories occupied by the regime during the 1967 Middle East war...The United Nations, however, under dominating influence by the US, has yet to investigate or even consider looking into such reports. The US has always used its veto power in the UN unreservedly to provide total immunity for Israeli atrocities and war crimes against any binding actions or even criticism by the world body... September 21, 2009 Robert Fisk’s World: Everyone seems to be agreeing with Bin Laden these days | The Independent Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan ...There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates – once more the Secretary of Defence – and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq. No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters wold wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan – four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river... [Let me see if I can remember what Einstein said - oh, yeah - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Or, if one prefers, "fools rush in where angels fear to tread."] Read article... Sliming Goldstone and His Report, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch Is there no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites? Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza... Read article... Zbig Brzezinski: Obama Administration Should Tell Israel U.S. Will Attack Israeli Jets if They Try to Attack Iran | ABC The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran's nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them. "We are not exactly impotent little babies," Brzezinski said. "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? ... We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."... [Could this really be happening? Is some sort of sanity making a belated appearance in Washington, D.C.?] Read article... Dismantling the Matrix of Control, by Jeff Halper | Middle East Report Online Almost a decade ago I wrote an article describing Israel’s “matrix of control” over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It consisted then of three interlocking systems: military administration of much of the West Bank and incessant army and air force intrusions elsewhere; a skein of “facts on the ground,” notably settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also bypass roads connecting the settlements to Israel proper; and administrative measures like house demolitions and deportations. I argued in 2000 that unless this matrix was dismantled, the occupation would not be ended and a two-state solution could not be achieved. Since then the occupation has grown immeasurably stronger and more entrenched... (Jeff Halper is director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.) Read article... September 20, 2009 "Stepping on others' graves," from a lecture by visiting UCLA Professor Saree Makdisi | AFP  FROM the time of the Crusades, the Ma’man Allah cemetery, west of the old city of Jerusalem, was used by the holy city’s Palestinian population. Its 20-hectare site was revered as Palestine’s largest and most important Muslim cemetery and included the remains of the companions of the prophet Muhammad. But since 1948 when the state of Israel was created the cemetery’s fate has mirrored the fate of Palestinians who remained within its borders, visiting American-Palestinian academic Saree Makdisi said this week. ”It came under state control.”... [I have great hopes for Prof. Makdisi, the nephew of Edward Said and his heir apparent. He speaks the truth simply, in a way that even ordinary, confused people can understand. There is a distinct possibility that the Palestinians will have a voice that can cut through the Zionist hasbara like a knife through butter - and people will finally understand what's been going on for the last 60+ years.] September 19. 2009 Finding War Crimes:Sinking the Goldstone Report, by Nadia Hijab | Counterpunch Timing is everything. On Monday, the United States assumed its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council -- the one the Bush administration had cold-shouldered, then boycotted. The U.S. representative declared in Obamaesque tones, "Make no mistake: The United States will not look the other way in the face of serious human rights abuses." And on Tuesday, Justice Richard Goldstone and his team submitted the report of their fact-finding mission into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during Israel's December-January offensive against Gaza -- a report requested by the Council itself. The Goldstone Report could derail the Obama administration's hopes of a two-state solution. Unless, that is, someone can sink it. An unlikely set of allies may come together to do so: Israel, given the findings against it of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity; the United States, to defend Israel as well as its own plans for the Middle East; Egypt; and the Palestinian Authority... Read article... Clinton: ‘Time Running Out for Iran’ | antiwar.com Warns of 'Profound Consequences' if Iran Can't Prove Intentions Are Peaceful  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today warned of ‘profound consequences’ if Iran is unable to convince the United States that their civilian nuclear program “is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes.”... [This whore for Israel is demanding that Iran prove a negative, or she'll get her wish - bomb, bomb, bomb. Is this all that the Empire has to offer the world?] September 16. 2009 Crimes of War | The Economist A UN mission concludes that war crimes were committed in Gaza  ISRAEL is reeling from the accusations of a UN fact-finding mission that it deliberately sowed death and destruction among civilians in the Gaza Strip during a three-week military operation ending in January. The mission was chaired by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone and published its report on Tuesday September 15th. It concludes that “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operation as essentially a response to rocket attacks in exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”... Read article... Letter from Mazin In today’s digest: 1) A 1918 statement on Palestine-Zionist conflict by President Woodrow Wilson that remains valid today, 2) a very important action call about the just released UN report on Israeli war crimes (please act), 3) a news item on Palestinian citizens of Israel calling for a general strike on Oct 1st, and 4) we commemorate the anniversary of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila (my review of a book on the subject included)... September 15. 2009 Israeli peace groups target US fundraising, by Jonathan Cook | The National  The extremist group Ateret Cohanim is buying up property in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City with funds raised in the US Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Gush Shalom, a small peace group that advocates Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, is preparing to send details to the US tax authorities questioning the charitable status of several organisations. Adam Keller, a spokesman, said these operations’ tax-exempt status meant that “settlement expansion is effectively being subsidised out of the pockets of the US taxpayer and government”. September 13, 2009 Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State, by Joshua Holland | AlterNet What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heelof the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same"children of Israel" described in the Old Testament? And what if mostmodern Israelis aren't descended from the ancient Israelites at all,but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others whodidn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish anew state following the attempt to exterminate them during World WarII, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors hadlived there for millennia? What if the entire tale of the JewishDiaspora -- the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around theworld every year detailing the ancient Jews' exile from Judea, theyears spent wandering through the desert, their escape from thePharaoh's clutches -- is all wrong? That's the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. After 19 weeks on the Israeli best-seller list, the book is being translated into a dozen languages and will be published in the United States this year by Verso... [According to the Amazon website, the hardcover edition of the English version will be available as of October 19th - they are accepting pre-orders.] Read article... An Open Letter to Members of University Communities around the World | IJAN We are Jewish students who are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part. Our commitment is to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine. As Jews, we decry Israel's 60+ years of Palestinian genocide, and we reject the claim that Israeli violence defends a state for "us" and "our" future. We are grounded in the histories of Jewish people who, in many times and places, built solidarity with others in common struggle against racism, oppression, and state violence. We are inspired by the legacy of student activists in this past century who made critical contributions to resistance and liberation movements around the world. We will not be silent about the role played by the United States, US-based organizations, and other western states, including universities and campus groups, in justifying, funding, and escalating Israeli terrorism against Palestinians... September 11, 2009 Bum Wraps: Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...Abe Foxman, President of ADL and AIPAC on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing four days earlier as both offered to send an Israeli flag to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston's Mission Hill section. The plan was to wrap Ted Kennedy’s casket, side by side with the American flag, each flag to cover roughly half of Ted’s casket during Kennedy’s internationally broadcast funeral, which was even watched live in Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs. Only since the lobby’s continuing exploitation of the Holocaust and ADL’s use of the image of Yasser Arafat to demonize him and raise millions to fund illegal settlement expansion, did Foxman see such a terrific chance to hype brand Zionism, this time by linking it in perpetuity to the Kennedy mystique and the Arlington Cemetery eternal flame. Wrapping Kennedy in the Israeli flag for history would no doubt give a boost to Israel’s preferred historical narrative and the Israeli flag which has increasingly come to represent virulent Zionism and its crimes... Read article... Action Against Wave of "Racist" Measures: Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike, by Jonathan Cook in Nazareth | Counterpunch The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens to call the first general strike in several years. The one-day stoppage is due to take place on October 1, a date heavy with symbolism because it marks the anniversary of another general strike, in 2000 at the start of the second intifada, when 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli police.The Arab leadership said it was responding to a string of what it called “racist” government measures that cast the Arab minority, a fifth of the population, as enemies of the state... Read article... Fascism Needs an Enemy, by Ran HaCohen | antiwar.com July 19, 2009 Critically thinking Israelis – a negligible minority – already know the pattern: no matter how extreme our new prime minister is, it won’t take more than a couple of months for the media to portray him as the sane, moderate, and pragmatic leader of the political center. If even the warrior General Sharon could be reborn as "a Man of Peace," why can’t Netanyahu? The landmark was his "Bar Ilan Speech" of June 14, after which mainstream Israeli columnists, lead by the pathetic Ari Shavit (Ha’aretz) and his lowbrow twin brother Ya’ir Lapid (Yedioth Achronot), all resorted to ludicrous narratives of Rebirth, Revolution, and Rubicon for the allegedly new leader of peace-loving Israel. One can expect little else from the Israeli mainstream, blinded as it is by decades of indoctrination and vested interests, or from Israel’s President Peres, whose political lexicon never included the T of Truth. But the world should be warned. Unlike Lebanon or Iran, Israel has not moved a single step forward in the Obama Era. On the contrary: With the rogue triumvirate of Netanyahu, Barak, and Lieberman, Israel is now ruled by the most nationalist, racist, and fanatical government it has ever had... In this digest: Pictures from Palestine before the British occupation of 1917, declaration by prominent artists and others including Dany Glover, Naomi Klein, and Jane Fonda on Apartheid Israel (can add your name), Yakov Rabin’s article on why Zionism is anti-semitic, good news on spread of boycott campaign and on legal action to force EU to comply with its own laws and not support Israeli violations, and two planned actions (a march to Gaza and a UK action on campuses). Israel thumbed its nose even at the very minimal demand of a temporary “freeze” in its illegal colonial settlement activities (this is like a rapist wanting a lot of rewards for a partial temporary halt to raping his victim while they negotiate how to continue raping the victim in a longer term fashion). My thought is that the minimal we can do is total boycotts, divestments, and sanctions per the Civil Society call to Action of 2005 http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=66 ACTION: Declaration by prominent artists and others including Dany Glover, Naomi Klein, and Jane Fonda "we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmannhave all characterized as an apartheid regime." http://torontodeclaration.blogspot.com/2009/09/toronto-declaration-no-celebration-of.html Fighting antisemitism in Canada by Dr. Yakov M. Rabkin According to the Israeli author Tom Segev, the founder of Zionism Theodore Herzl considered antisemites «our friends and allies»: antisemites want to be rid of Jews while Zionists want to gather them to Israel. Many Jews realized this and opposed Zionism from its very beginning in the late 19th century: they saw that Zionists played into the hands of their worst enemies, the antisemites. Indeed, the Zionists’ cooperation with antisemites was usually harmonious. Thus, in the 1930s, Zionist emissaries in Germany established a smooth working relationship with the Nazi authorities. In the opinion of Howard Sachar, American historian sympathetic to the Zionist movement, Adolf Eichmann, who was then in charge of Jewish emigration, “dealt cordially and cooperatively with Zionist representatives from Palestine. When the Zionists sought permission to open vocational training camps for future emigrants [to Palestine], Eichmann willingly supplied them with housing and equipment”. http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=116 Ahava drops spokesman Amid Public Relations Fiasco: A first victory for CODEPINK's "Stolen Beauty" campaign. “The Israeli cosmetics company, Ahava, which illegally manufactures and appropriates its products in occupied Palestinian territory, has dropped its spokesperson Kristin Davis amid a public relations debacle sparked by the peace group CODEPINK’s Stolen Beauty campaign.” http://www.stolenbeauty.org/article.php?id=5080 (History books written by winners make the losers look really bad. Actually, the British rule of Palestine 1917-1948 was far more devastating to the fabric of native Palestinian society than the Ottoman rule for the 400 years before it and things got far worse as the British gave helped build the apartheid state of Israel) Pictures of Palestine under Ottoman rule http://www.lovely0smile.com/Msg-2780.html ACTION: Gaza Freedom March Jan 1, 2010 http://gazafreedommarch.org/article.php?id=5063 Legal Action to enforce Human Rights Conditions in EU-Israel Association Agreement http://nlp.prc.org.uk/lists/lt.php?id=bE1XBwdVUgpTSgcGBhhTAQUGCg%3D%3D ACTION: Action Palestine (www.actionpalestine.org), the UK nationwide student movement active on Palestine issues and affiliate of the R2E Campaign have teamed up with several other Palestine solidarity originations in the UK to organize a weekend conference titled “Boycott: a strategy to defeat Israeli apartheid” aimed at sharing experiences and reflecting on the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. Action Palestine is currently preparing for the new academic year by putting together packs of information on education under occupation for freshers at UK Universities. Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD | A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home September 1, 2009 Letter from our friend Mazin Qumsiyeh 8/31/09 In this digest: We comment on the transformation of Palestine and the weakness of Palestinian leaders, describe events happening that you will hear little about (or hear distorted stories about), share videos about the Israeli targeting of civilian and about the right of resistance, and share two action items asking you to write to the GAP about their opening a store in Israel and writing to Obama to demand Israel freeze its illegal settlement activities in the occupied areas (as the 2002 road map demands). "O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even though it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, be he rich or poor, Allah is a Better Protector to both (than you). So follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you may avoid justice, and if you distort your witness or refuse to give it, verily, Allah is ever well acquainted with what you do."(Surah Nisaa':135) Israel named a new ruler on Palestinians this week. Eitan Dangot (to be promoted to Major General) will direct the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) in the Israel army. He is certainly more important and more powerful than Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. Nothing goes in and out of the occupied areas or moves between its cities without his approval. No construction, no economic activity, no education, no transport, and no health care are done without this overlord agreeing to it. He is in a line of Zionists managing Palestinian affairs that go back to Herbert Samuel in 1920 (who had absolute executive and legislative powers). Samuel states in his memoires that he was appointed by the British government not only with his known Zionist sympathies but largely because of these sympathies. Palestinians responded by mass resignation from government jobs, by strikes, protests, petitions, and pleas for change. But some notable elites met with him 7 July 1920 despite a call to boycott. Later he fired the principled mayor of Jerusalem Musa Kadhim Alhusaini and appointed the more compliant Ragheb Nashashibi (sounds familiar?). According to news reports, Israel arrested several people praying at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. One of those was “a Gaza man was detained for being in the area without a permit.” (and yet Zionist propaganda still regurgitates the myth that the apartheid walls are for security!). Jimmy Carter joins the fast for Gaza. Some Palestinians spend all their waking hours planning how to defeat fellow Palestinians. Israeli papers leak the news that Obama administration is giving up on the idea of a settlement freeze in the illegally occupied areas. Settler population surpasses 500,000. Some are popping Champaign bottles celebrating the final victory of the Zionist project and the end not only of the physical Palestine but the idea of Palestine. Some of the victims as in all colonial situations get acclimatized and collaborate with their oppressors. Is this a Kafquesque/Orwellian world we live in or is that itself suggestive that a normal world can exist. Perhaps it is the way it always is: nature red in tooth and claw, a dog-eat-dog world and we do have big dogs and little dogs (and parasites that transfect dog brains making them rabid). But then again, nature indeed has everything and unlike creatures born into who they are, humans have choices to be like hyenas feeding on dead carcasses or like flowers giving nectar and beauty to earth. Sometimes the choice to be like the tapeworm or the honeybee seems to some individuals not so obvious. Bees are natural workers who live and die anonymous and unfelt as individuals while one tape worm can be prosperous, felt, and have an individual difference in its habitat. (sorry, this is the biologist in me speaking). But back to the human realm, we can also choose to be a war criminal like Peres, Kissinger, and Hitler or by a peacemaker like Desmond Tutu and Mahatma Gandhi (and anything in between). We can choose to be racist claiming Arabs or Muslims are this or that (or Jews for that matter) or we can embrace our common humanity and failings and call for coexistence and annulment of all ideologies of racism and segregation (e.g. Zionism). We do have choices. In these choices lies our true freedom and liberation as human beings. Going with the flow/fashion of “our tribe” (us vs. them) lay our enslavement. Those of us who refuse enslavement have what Mahmoud Darwish called “an incurable malady”: hope. Video: Lest we forget: Guardian investigates Israeli war crimes in Gaza http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ToZTtGOr0k Video: Free Gaza on the right of Resistance Action 1: Gap set to open in Israel http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/23/1007397/gap-set-to-open-in-israel Write to them at: custserv@gap.com and boycott ACTION 2: News reports (e.g. in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110507.html) reports that U.S. dropped or is considering dropping demand on Israel to freeze settlements in Occupied East Jerusalem (International law is clear that such settlements are illegal). Write and call Obama to demand complete freeze of all settlement activities including “natural growth” and walls built on Palestinian lands (this is also demanded by the road map that we are told Israel agreed to). Call: President Barack Obama 202-456-1111 Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/mailman/listinfo/humanrights |
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