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Jimmy Carter: Israel's 'apartheid' policies worse than South Africa's

(Haaretz Service, December 12, 2006)
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said in remarks broadcast Monday that Israeli policy in the West Bank represented instances of apartheid worse even that those that once held sway in South Africa. . . . Carter's comments were broadcast on Israel Radio, which played a tape of an interview with the ex-president . . . "When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa." . . . "The hope is that my book will at least stimulate a debate, which has not existed in this country. There's never been any debate on this issue, of any significance." . . . The book has sparked strong criticism from Jewish figures in the United States. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has said that some comments from the former president border on anti-Semitism. . . . Carter has rejected the criticism of the book and its use of the word apartheid. . . . "I feel completely at ease," said Carter, about his commitment to the book, which accuses Israel of oppressing Palestinians. "I am not running for office. And I have Secret Service protection." . . . "The greatest commitment in my life has been trying to bring peace to Israel," Carter told the Atlanta Press Club last week. . . . "Israel will never have peace until they agree to withdraw [from the territories]."

posted by LoZo 7:08 PM

 

Jimmy Carter: Israel's 'apartheid' policies worse than South Africa's

(Haaretz Service, December 12, 2006)
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said in remarks broadcast Monday that Israeli policy in the West Bank represented instances of apartheid worse even that those that once held sway in South Africa. . . . Carter's comments were broadcast on Israel Radio, which played a tape of an interview with the ex-president . . . "When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa." . . . "The hope is that my book will at least stimulate a debate, which has not existed in this country. There's never been any debate on this issue, of any significance." . . . The book has sparked strong criticism from Jewish figures in the United States. Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has said that some comments from the former president border on anti-Semitism. . . . Carter has rejected the criticism of the book and its use of the word apartheid. . . . "I feel completely at ease," said Carter, about his commitment to the book, which accuses Israel of oppressing Palestinians. "I am not running for office. And I have Secret Service protection." . . . "The greatest commitment in my life has been trying to bring peace to Israel," Carter told the Atlanta Press Club last week. . . . "Israel will never have peace until they agree to withdraw [from the territories]."

posted by LoZo 7:08 PM

 

Israel Massacres Women and Children in Gaza Attack
(BBC News, 8 November 2006)
At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinian sources have said. . . . Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead. . . . Palestinian leaders have called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to force Israel to stop military raids. . . . The Palestinian prime minister, Hamas's Ismail Haniya, denounced the Israeli attack as an "awful massacre" and said talks on forming Palestinian unity government would be suspended. . . . Palestinian hospital officials said 13 of the dead belonged to the same family, and two of them were women and six were children. . . . The Israelis withdrew from the town on Tuesday following a major offensive centred in Beit Hanoun. . . . More than 60 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in a week-long operation that Israel says was aimed at stopping militant rocket fire into Israel from Gaza. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: So the Zionists are killing 60 Palestinians for each soldier they lose . . . SAVAGES they are!] . . . TV footage from Beit Hanoun showed the victims being taken to hospital in their sleeping clothes, some with terrible injuries. . . . "It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen. We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street," 22-year-old eyewitness Attaf Hamad told Reuters news agency. . . . "I saw people coming out of a house covered in blood. I started screaming to wake up the neighbours." . . . A local Hamas leader has called for the group to resume suicide bombings inside Israel, a policy suspended two years ago by the main militant faction. . . . "Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government. . . . Israeli forces also killed a 17-year-old civilian near Jabaliya refugee camp, hospital officials in Gaza said. . . . Earlier, in a separate incident, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid near the West Bank town of Jenin.

posted by LoZo 7:27 AM

 

Israel committing war crimes in Gaza
(Roee Nahmias, yNetNews, November 3, 2006)
Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List – Ta'al) met in Cairo Thursday with Palestinian Liberation Organization Politburo Chief Farouk Kaddoumi to discuss, among other things, the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip. . . . Following the meeting the two said Israel was committing war crimes in Beit Hanoun and called on the international community to intervene. . . . "We dealt mainly with the IDF activity in Gaza," Tibi told Ynet. "Kaddoumi described it as war crimes, and I agreed with him." . . . The recent appointment of Minister Avigdor Lieberman was also raised during the meeting. "Kaddoumi asked where the extreme Israeli government is headed," Tibi said.

posted by LoZo 10:34 AM

 

How Israel is Engineering the "Clash of Civilizations"
(Jonathan Cook, Counterpunch, September 23/24, 2006)
The fresh claims about a new anti-Semitism began life in the spring of 2002, with the English-language website of Israel's respected liberal daily newspaper, Haaretz, flagging for many months a special online supplement of articles on the "New anti-Semitism", warning that the "age-old hatred" was being revived in Europe and America. . . . Like its precursors, argued Israel's apologists, the latest wave of anti-Semitism was the responsibility of Western progressive movements -- though with a fresh twist. An ever-present but largely latent Western anti-Semitism was being stoked into frenzy by the growing political and intellectual influence of extremist Muslim immigrants. The implication was that an unholy alliance had been spawned between the left and militant Islam. . . . Netanyahu proposed "lancing the boil" by beginning an aggressive public relations campaign of "self-defence". A month later Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, picked on the softest target of all, warning during a state visit that the fight against anti-Semitism must begin in Germany, where "voices of anti-Semitism can be heard". . . . But, as ever, the main target of the new anti-Semitism campaign were audiences in the US, Israel's generous patron. There, members of the Israel lobby were turning into a chorus of doom. . . . In the early stages of the campaign, the lobby's real motivation was not concealed: it wanted to smother a fledgling debate by American civil society, particularly the churches and universities, to divest -- withdraw their substantial investments -- from Israel in response to Operation Defensive Shield. . . . The first aim, and possibly the best understood, was to stifle all criticism of Israel, particularly in the US. During the course of 2003 it became increasingly apparent to journalists like myself that the American media, and soon much of the European media, was growing shy of printing even the mild criticism of Israel it usually allowed. By the time Israel began stepping up the pace of construction of its monstrous wall across the West Bank in spring 2003, editors were reluctant to touch the story. . . . As the fourth estate fell silent, so did many of the progressive voices in our universities and churches. Divestment was entirely removed from the agenda. McCarthyite organisations like CampusWatch helped enforce the reign of intimidation. . . . Sharon took advantage of the manufactured climate of fear in July 2004 to claim that France was in the grip of "the wildest anti-Semitism", urging French Jews to come to Israel. . . . The third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere. . . . In this spirit, American Jewish academics like David Goldhagen characterised anti-Semitism as constantly "evolving". . . . This final goal of the proponents of "the new anti-Semitism" was so successful because it could be easily conflated with other ideas associated with America's war on terror, such as the clash of civilisations. If it was "us" versus "them", then the new anti-Semitism posited from the outset that the Jews were on the side of the angels. It fell to the Christian West to decide whether to make a pact with good (Judaism, Israel, civilisation) or evil (Islam, Osama bin Laden, Londonistan). . . . We are far from reaching the end of this treacherous road, both because the White House is bankrupt of policy initiatives apart from its war on terror, and because Israel's place is for the moment assured at the heart of the US administration's neoconservative agenda.

[Click the link above to read the complete article.]

posted by LoZo 8:11 AM

 

Non-Aligned Nations Slam Israel's Aggression
(Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2006)
A Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) "final document" praising Lebanon for its "heroic resistance to the Israeli aggression" has irked government officials in Jerusalem because some countries with close bilateral ties with Israel are a part of the movement and, as such, ostensibly signed off on the resolution. . . . According to the 143rd clause of the 280-clause final document, "The Heads of State or Government expressed solidarity with and support for the Government and people of Lebanon, hailed their heroic resistance to the Israeli aggression, and emphasized the primordial importance of Lebanon's national unity and stability." . . . Among the NAM members are India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Honduras and Guatemala, all countries with which Israel has strong relations. . . . "A document like this is used by all those who want to censure Israel, saying 'look what a 118-country movement has to say,'" the official said. . . . He added that it gave a "kosher certificate" to the most blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric. . . . As expected, other clauses in the document that dealt with Israel and the Palestinians were extremely critical. . . . For instance, clause 135 "strongly condemned Israel's continuation and escalation of its military aggression against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip" and said that "such unlawful actions by the occupying Power constitute grave breaches of international law, i.e. reported war crimes, for which the perpetrators must be held accountable and brought to justice."

posted by LoZo 5:01 AM

 

General says 'troops died for political spin'
(Ynet News, 14 September 2006)
Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon continued his attack against the military and political echelons in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon and called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to resign. . . . In an interview to "Haaretz" magazine, Yaalon slammed the decision to launch a ground operation, during which 33 soldiers were killed. . . . "This move was part of a (political) spin; it had no distinct military purpose," he said. "It was aimed at providing a sense of victory. You cannot act in such a way. You do not send soldiers to carry out a futile mission after the political results have already been determined. To me this is corrupt." . . . Asked specifically whether the soldiers died for the sake of a political spin, Yaalon said "Yes, and this is why people must resign. You do not need a commission of inquiry for this; those who made the decisions should take responsibility and step down." . . . "Olmert cannot say 'I didn’t know.' Even if he does not have military experience and never acted as defense minister, he knows how you go to war; this is not how it’s done. . . . Yaalon didn't spare Halutz either, saying, "He should have resigned as soon as the operation ended. The IDF chief of staff failed in managing the war. He gave the political echelon a feeling it had more ability than it actually did to accomplish a political victory with aggressive military action. . . . He added: "Halutz went into the war without defining it as a war, maybe without realizing it was a war. He didn't understand the significance of the steps he was taking. He didn't recruit the reserves in time, he didn't open the military war reserves store unit in time, and he didn't activate senior command positions. He ran the war from an office."

posted by LoZo 10:26 AM

 

IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon
(Meron Rappaport, Haaretz, 13 September 2006)
"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. . . . Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. . . . In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war. . . . The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate. . . . The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds. . . . The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit. . . . The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended. . . . Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war. . . . It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel. . . . A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death. . . . International law forbids the use of weapons that cause "excessive injury and unnecessary suffering", and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category. . . . The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military.

posted by LoZo 7:22 AM

 

Russia calls for independent investigation of Israel's cluster bomb use
(RIA Novosti, September 9, 2006)
The Russian foreign minister said Friday that Russia supports an independent investigation into Israel's alleged use of cluster bombs in Lebanon. . . . "I believe that in the interests of everyone and for the sake of turning this page, it is necessary to hold such an investigation, to determine the facts and to not leave any disagreements," Sergei Lavrov said. . . . Israel's military operations in Lebanon began July 12 after the radical Islamic group Hizbollah killed three Israeli servicemen and captured two others in a cross-border raid. . . . Before the August 14 ceasefire, Israeli military operations claimed the lives of about 1,000 Lebanese civilians, forced nearly a quarter of the country's population to flee their homes, and demolished large parts of the country's infrastructure. . . . "In the last days and hours of the Lebanese war, when the UN resolution 1701 was already coordinated, many questions arose concerning how the war was waged and why such intensity was displayed after the resolution had been concluded," Lavrov said. . . . He said Israel claimed that all the weapons it used in Lebanon conformed to international norms and conventions. . . . "An investigation is being held now by request of the Lebanese authorities," the minister said. "I believe it will do no harm if an independent source will help to clarify the situation."

posted by LoZo 6:55 PM

 

The Beginning of the End for Israel
(Nathen Gardels, The Huffington Post, 2006-08-01)
The most disturbing analysis comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser, who links the Iraq and Israel conflict and says bluntly: "Neocon prescriptions [of use of force to try to change things unilaterally] of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well." . . . It is important to recognize that Israel defeated formal armies led in most cases by inefficient and often corrupt regimes. Hezbollah is waging "asymmetrical" warfare against Israel based on increasingly radicalized and even fanaticized mass support. So, yes, Israel will have much more difficulty in coping effectively with this latter in contrast to the former. . . . The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. . . . The notion that the U.S. was going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding. That is why the U.S. needs to start talking with the Iraqis about the day of our disengagement. We shouldn't leave precipitously. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Zalmay) Khalilzad told me that four months would be precipitous. I agree. But we should agree that the U.S. will disengage at some period beyond that. . . . While the Iranian nuclear problem is serious, and while the Iranians are marginally involved in Lebanon, the fact of the matter is that the challenge they pose is not imminent. And because it isn't imminent, there is time to deal with it. . . . Sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly. To do that produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. . . . In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country; it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player. And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education and the role of women in society. . . . The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation. . . . If we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the worst. But if we do not, I fear that the region will explode. In the long run, Israel would be in great jeopardy.

posted by LoZo 7:50 AM

 

Dead UN soldiers had atrocoities info
(Wayne Madsen, Prison Planet, July 28 2006)
Our intelligence sources report that the Israeli Defense Force attack on Lebanon is being carried out as a joint Israeli-U.S. military operation. Moreover, there are joint Israeli and U.S. war rooms coordinating the U.S.-supported Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The ultimate aim of Washington and Jerusalem is not only to eliminate Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon but also to remake Lebanon as an American and Israeli client state. Israeli forces are pounding parts of Lebanon, especially in the north, where there are no Hezbollah units and primarily Christian populations. In addition, Israeli forces are being aided by the Bush administration with high-resolution overhead imagery from U.S. spy satellites and signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts from National Security Agency assets, including SIGINT satellites. . . . The result of U.S. intelligence support for Israel is directly linked to the targeting of particular locations, including the Israeli launch of 24 high-explosive missiles on a block of ten buildings in south Beirut. The entire block was leveled in the attack. The deliberate Israeli attack on a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) outpost in southern Lebanon was the result of that post gaining information of Israeli atrocities committed against the civilian Lebanese population. The Israeli attack, called deliberate by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, killed blue helmet peacekeepers from China, Finland, Canada, and Austria. Israel continued to attack the UN post even as rescuers attempted to locate survivors in the rubble of the building. The deliberate 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, an NSA spy ship monitoring communications during the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, was the result of the Liberty intercepting Israeli communications on the massacre by Israeli forces of surrendering Egyptian prisoners of war in Sinai. Israeli planes continued to attack the ship, even after it raised a large American flag. U.S. Navy and NSA survivors in the water were also strafed by Israeli aircraft.

posted by LoZo 8:04 PM

 

Tel Aviv: Thousands rally against war
(Attila Somfalvi, Ynetnews, 22 July 2006)
Thousands march in Tel Aviv to protest Lebanon fighting, call on soldiers to refuse taking part in war. Clashes with passersby erupt during event, activists called 'traitors'. . . . Thousands of left-wing activists, including many Arab citizens, marched Saturday evening from the Rabin Square to the Cinematheque plaza in Tel Aviv in protest of the fighting in Lebanon. The protestors held up signs with slogans against the war and called for an immediate ceasefire. . . . According to the demonstrators, a prisoner exchange deal with Hizbullah must be struck, as well as a similar deal with Hamas. Marchers also urged IDF soldiers not to take part in the Lebanon operation, chanting: "Listen up, soldier – it's your duty to refuse." Other slogans recited by the participants were: "The occupation is a disaster, leave Lebanon now," "Olmert and Bush have struck a deal – to carry on with the occupation," and "Children in Beirut and Haifa want to go on living." . . . Former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, who spoke in the demonstration, said that "the government has allowed the destructive powers of the army to drag us into the killing. The Defense Forces cannot be tuned into the army of occupation and killing. We must call in international forces, negotiate and make peace."

posted by LoZo 3:36 AM

 

U.S. gives Israel a blank check to murder civilians
(Barry Grey, WSWS, July 17, 2006)
The Bush administration has given Israel a carte blanche to wage war against Lebanon, bombing and killing as it sees fit. American diplomacy in the crisis precipitated by Israeli aggression first against Gaza and then against its neighbor to the north is concentrated on blocking any move for a ceasefire and concocting a pretext for future military action against Syria and Iran. . . . It is transparently clear that for President Bush it is of no consequence that tens of thousands of American citizens, not to mention other foreign nationals, are in harm's way, as Israel continues to blast away at civilian populations in every part of the country, including the capital, Beirut. Already, eight Canadians have died as a result of an Israeli bomb attack on a house in southern Lebanon. . . . Far from issuing a warning to Israel to desist until the Americans can be evacuated, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been using every available forum to justify Israel’s savage assault and scotch all efforts to halt the lopsided fighting, in which Israel has an overwhelming military advantage. . . . In Orwellian fashion, any form of Arab resistance against Israel is branded as "terrorism," while the indiscriminate bombing of cities, villages, roads, power plants, airports and bridges is called "self-defense." . . . One example of Israeli self-defense occurred on Saturday, in the deadliest single attack on Lebanese civilians since Israel launched the war last Wednesday. According to Reuters, residents sought to leave the border village of Marwaheen in southern Lebanon after the Israeli military ordered them to evacuate over a loudspeaker. [The barbaric people of] Israel then bombed a civilian convoy trying to leave the village, killing 16 people. . . . Hezbollah is a bourgeois nationalist movement with broad support within Lebanon and throughout the Arab world. It has won support in large part because of its armed resistance against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which extended from the Israeli invasion of 1982 until Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000. . . . It has every right to carry out actions against Israeli military targets, under conditions in which Israel continues to maintain a brutal and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

posted by LoZo 4:03 PM

 

The Palestinians have no chance, unless we free our souls from Zionist control
by Israel Adam Shamir

Israeli tactics in Gaza resemble the strategy of "starving into obedience" applied by the Pentagon to North Vietnam, per the Pentagon Papers, - the single most evil piece of strategic planning in the 20th century: . . . "Strikes at population targets are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with neighbours. Destruction of locks and dams, however, does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million dead?) unless food is provided--which we could offer to do at the conference table." . . . If the Jews were to bomb a hundred thousand Gazans to oblivion, probably there would be "a wave of revulsion", but destruction, starvation and thirst are equally efficient, and do not disturb the world conscience all that much. . . . A Palestinian Christian Professor and a Knesset Member, Azmi Bishara said well of the resistance fighters: "Some people chose to respond to the murder of Palestinian civilians by attacking an Israeli military installation. They made the hardest choice, and chose the difficult path. Those who did not take this path, who did not make this sacrifice, or put their courage to this test, or suffer trembling nerves in the darkness of the tunnel, yet who have some delicacy of feeling towards the pains of the Palestinians could at least spare this operation the embarrassment of tainting it as terrorist." . . . Yea, when the Jews attack, that's war, when they are attacked, it is terror! . . . Thus, the Hamas was right in refusing to recognise the Jewish state: in no way can this state become a tolerable neighbour, whether ruled by Labour of Peretz or by Kadima of Olmert, or even in extremely unlikely case of being ruled by Mr Avnery. This state has to be dismantled, like the Assassins' extraterritorial State that once controlled the Middle East. The Assassins drew their power from their ability and preparedness to assassinate the prominent leaders of Crusaders and Muslims, while leaving alive only weak rulers who did not dare to touch them. . . . The Jews do the same: sometimes, by sword, sometimes, by their money, sometimes, by their media, but no strong leader has emerged within their sphere of influence. . . . The Palestinians have no chance, unless we free our souls from Jewish control. And here we may turn to the second J-word, more mighty than the first: Jesus. The present subservience of the West began with a minor step. In 1960s, the Western churches removed from their liturgy a prayer "Oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis", "Let us pray for perfidious Jews that our God and Lord will remove the veil from their hearts so that they too may acknowledge the light of thy truth which is our Lord Jesus Christ and be delivered from their darkness." This was considered "antisemitic," though it is a far cry from the Jewish prayer "Shepokh Hamatha," "Lord, vent your fury upon goyim who do not know your name." But the Jews preserved their prayer of vengeance, while misled and subdued Christians dropped their prayer of mercy. Say this prayer today, say it in your church, dismiss a priest who dares it not, and tomorrow you will not writhe in face of Jewish displeasure, and Gaza – and your soul - will be saved. And if your prayer will be answered, the Jews will be saved, too.

posted by LoZo 5:15 PM

 

Palestinian PM office set on fire
(BBC NEWS, 12 June 2006)
Gunmen loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have set fire to the offices of the Hamas prime minister and parliament in Ramallah. . . . Hamas MP Khalil Rabei was briefly kidnapped, but later released. . . . Earlier on Monday at least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, amid escalating tension between the rival political groups. . . . The Ramallah rampage erupted hours after Hamas gunmen attacked a building belonging to the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security agency in Rafah. . . . Correspondents say security forces took to Ramallah's streets with gunmen from the Fatah offshoot the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. . . . Gunmen shot out the windows of the Palestinian parliament and stormed the cabinet offices, smashing furniture and computers. . . . The office was unoccupied as Ismail Haniya is based in the Gaza Strip. . . . It is not clear if there have been any casualties, but the buildings reportedly suffered heavy damage. . . . Militants tried to prevent fire engines from reaching the site to extinguish the flames. . . . "Every time they touch one of ours in Gaza, we will get 10 of theirs in the West Bank," a member of the security service said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency. . . .Tensions have worsened between the two sides since Mr Abbas called a referendum on a statehood plan which would implicitly recognise Israel, whose right to exist Hamas rejects. . . . At least 20 people, mostly militia members, have been killed in clashes between the two factions in the past two months.

posted by LoZo 7:29 PM

 

The 'Israelization' of American foreign policy
(Djoko Susilo, The Jakarta Post, May 3, 2006)
President George W. Bush has learnt from his father, president George H.W. Bush, that if he wants to successfully complete his second term as the United States president, never ever confront the powerful Jewish lobby. . . . Bush Jr. who succeeded Clinton, learnt this lesson well, and has done more than any other U.S. president to blindly help Israel, including by committing unspeakable crimes against Palestinians and abusing human rights in the Middle East. . . . Bush Jr. was and is adamant about pursuing policies to weaken the Arabs and Muslim countries in favor of a strong and militaristic Israel. Even racist Israeli politicians such as Benjamin Netanyahu or Gen. (ret.) Rafael Eitan have been depicted as "democrats", while Hamas, which democratically won the Palestine election, has been branded as "a terrorist organization". . . . The success of Israel in gaining total support from the American administration is the result of the grassroots movement, the Jewish lobby organizations. The most important Jewish lobby groups in the U.S. are AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress (AJC), and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). . . . They have been working hard to build an emotionally intense American identification with Israel. This has been pursued through various means. The most important is, American consciousness is saturated with guilt over Jewish suffering. . . . The feeling of guilt has been used to silence Israel's critics. Those who dare to raise questions over Israeli brutality against Palestinians would be branded as "anti-Semite". For American politicians, it equals the death sentence. . . . The Bush administration's war on terror was a good opportunity for Israel to position itself against "the dark forces" and the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. Israel is now marketing itself in the U.S. as a strategic and reliable partner to combat the axis of evil in the Middle East . . . Repositioning of the Israel-Arab conflict with "Islamic terrorism" is a very clever move. Not only did the Jewish state manage to avoid dangerous wars against Arab regimes but also strengthened its position in the U.S. by taking support from the Christian fundamentalists who perceive the war on terror as a new Crusade. . . . In no time president George W. Bush has been converted into a new crusader. . . . Bush laid out a binary policy: You are with us or against us. Condoleezza Rice, his secretary of state runs her department as a bastion of neocon, and on Middle East policy, she has successfully accelerated the process of the Israelization of American foreign policy which began under Clinton. . . . As a result, we cannot expect a long lasting and just peace in the Middle East if the foreign policy of only superpower and the strongest nation on earth has been hijacked and controlled by Israeli extremist politicians such as Netanyahu, Eitan, or other hard-liners who seek to occupy permanently al Quds (Jerusalem) and perpetuate the occupation of Palestine.

posted by LoZo 5:26 AM

 

Let us Not Forget that Ariel Sharon is a Vicious War Criminal
In his autobiography, Warrior, Sharon depicts Arabs as infantile, timorous, and untrustworthy. As one former U.S. official who knows him puts it, Sharon has the same condescending disregard for Arabs that Southern plantation-owners had for blacks.

Sharon is:
--A man even many Israelis consider a war criminal.

--A man who flies a large Israeli flag and Menorah atop his requisitioned home in the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem which must be constantly guarded by Israeli troops.

--The man who commanded Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (20,000+ Lebanese civilians dead) and was personally responsible for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres.

--A man whose personal history of brutalizing and dispossessing Palestinians goes back to the 1950s,

--A man who today as in the past is the main architect of Israel's settlement expansion programs in Jerusalem and throughout the occupied territories.

Do not mourn for this evil man. The world will be better off without him.

[ALSO SEE: The Crimes of Ariel Sharon]

posted by LoZo 12:42 PM

 

Bush Says Iraq War Is Being Fought for Israel
(Forward, December 16, 2005)
"If you're a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies," President Bush declared Monday, in a major address defending American policy in Iraq and his wider vision for the region. "Israel's long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East." . . . Israeli security officials argued the opposite view at this month's American-Israeli strategic dialogue, warning that regime change and democratization threatened to destabilize the Middle East. Israel sees its security tied to regimes such as Egypt and Jordan, and fears that democratization could turn those countries against Israel. . . . "I am skeptical when it comes to the supposition that democracy is a panacea. Not all democracies are good," said General Shlomo Brom, former chief of the Israeli army's strategic planning division. "What about a democracy in Egypt — let's say — which is governed by the Muslim Brotherhood? Would Egypt then have better relations with Israel than under Mubarak's regime?" . . . As the American-Israeli debate quietly heats up, the Bush administration's approach is creating fault lines within the Jewish community. On Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition took out a full-page advertisement attacking the Reform synagogue movement over its recent call for the United States to develop an exit strategy for the war in Iraq. . . . Neither the Republican Jewish Coalition ad nor the Reform statement mentioned Israel. But some pro-Israel activists and Israeli observers criticized Bush's comments, saying they could end up fueling claims that Jerusalem and Jewish groups pushed the United States into an unpopular war. . . . "It could put Israel in a very awkward situation with the American public, if Israel would be the excuse for losing more American soldiers every day," said Danny Rothschild . . . In a speech on Wednesday, Bush criticized anti-war opponents who would suggest that America went to war for Israel. At the same, he and other Republicans defending his foreign policy by linking it to Israel's security needs. . . . Senator John Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently argued in an interview with MSNBC that a premature American pullout would "put Israel in a very tenuous and vulnerable position." And a GOP activist, Bruce Blakeman, told the Forward that Israel's security has always played a key role in the president's thinking on Iraq.

[Also see: Hillary Clinton Says Future of America 'Intertwined' With Future of Israel]

posted by LoZo 10:06 AM

 

Israel war criminal 'avoids UK arrest'
(BBC NEWS, 12 September 2005)
The former head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip has told how he dodged arrest on war crimes charges after receiving a tip-off at Heathrow. . . . Major General Doron Almog is accused of breaching international laws during Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip. . . . He said he had flown straight home after the Israeli military attache had warned him not to leave his El Al jet. . . . Lawyers acting for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said a UK court had issued a warrant for his arrest. . . . Solicitors Hickman and Rose said the 54-year-old had been due to be arrested on suspicion of committing a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949, which is a criminal offence in the UK under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957. . . . Senior District Judge Timothy Workman had given the police authority to detain Maj Gen Almog during a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London, the law firm added. . . . The warrant relates to the bulldozing of more than 50 houses in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, when Maj Gen Almog was head of Israel's Southern Command. . . . It was seen as retaliation for an assault by Islamic militants on an Israeli Army post that left four soldiers dead. . . . Also under Maj Gen Almog's command, Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on a Hamas leader's home, killing the man, an assistant and 14 civilians, nine of them children. . . . "We were about to get off the plane, then one of the stewards came up to me and said the pilot asked that I disembark last," he told Israeli Army Radio. . . . "After some time, the chief steward said the Israeli military attache was on his way and wanted to speak to me. . . . "I phoned him and he told me not to get off the plane." . . . He and his wife had remained on the plane and flown back to Israel on its return, Maj Gen Almog added. . . . Any Israeli officer could now be arrested in Britain simply for having performed their duty, he said. . . . "They could do this tomorrow to any officer who has served in the Israeli army over the past five years."

posted by LoZo 10:29 AM

 

Watching the Gazan Fiasco . . . the shame of it all
(Jennifer Loewenstein, Counterpunch, August 17, 2005)
A great charade is taking place in front of the world media in the Gaza Strip. It is the staged evacuation of 8000 Jewish settlers from their illegal settlement homes, and it has been carefully designed to create imagery to support Israel's US-backed takeover of the West Bank and cantonization of the Palestinians. . . . There was never the slightest reason for Israel to send in the army to remove these settlers. The entire operation could have been managed, without the melodrama necessary for a media frenzy, by providing them with a fixed date on which the IDF would withdraw from inside the Gaza Strip. A week before, all the settlers will quietly have left ­with no TV cameras, no weeping girls, no anguished soldiers, no commentators asking cloying questions of how Jews could remove other Jews from their homes, and no more trauma about their terrible suffering, the world's victims, who therefore have to be helped to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank. . . . The settlers will relocate to other parts of Israel ­ and in some cases to other illegal settlements in the West Bank ­handsomely compensated for their inconvenience. Indeed, each Jewish family leaving the Gaza Strip will receive between $140,000 and $400,000 just for the cost of the home they leave behind. But these details are rarely mentioned in the tempest of reporting on the "great confrontation" and "historical moment" brought to us by Sharon and the thieving, murderous settler-culture he helped create. . . . In the 5 years of Israel's brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation, I never once saw or heard a segment as long and with as much sentimental, human detail as I did here; never once remember a reporter allowing a sympathetic young Palestinian woman, whose home was just bulldozed and who lost everything she owned, tell of her pain and sorrow, of her memories and her family's memories; never got to listen to her reflect on where she would go now and how she would live. And yet in Gaza alone more than 23,000 people have lost their homes to Israeli bulldozers and bombs since September 2000 -- often at a moment's notice ­ on the grounds that they "threatened Israel's security." . . . Where were the cameramen in May 2004 in Rafah when refugees twice over lost their homes again in a single night's raid, able to retrieve nothing of what they owned? Where were they when bulldozers and tanks tore up paved streets with steel blades, wrecked the sewage and water pipes, cut electricity lines, and demolished a park and a zoo; when snipers shot two children, a brother and sister, feeding their pigeons on the roof of their home? When the occupying army fired a tank shell into a group of peaceful demonstrators killing 14 of them including two children? Where have they been for the past five years when the summer heat of Rafah makes life so unbearable it is all one can do to sit quietly in the shade of one's corrugated tin roof -- because s/he is forbidden to go to the sea, ten minutes' walking distance from the city center? Or because if they ventured to the more open spaces they became walking human targets? . . . Where were the 900 international journalists in April 2002 after the Jenin refugee camp was laid to waste in the matter of a week in a show of pure Israeli hubris and sadism? Where were the 900 international journalists last fall when the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza lay under an Israeli siege and more than 100 civilians were killed? Where were they for five years while the entire physical infrastructure of the Gaza Strip was being destroyed? Which one of them reported that every crime of the Israeli occupation ­ from home demolitions, targeted assassinations and total closures to the murder of civilians and the wanton destruction of commercial and public property . . . Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be covering the many non-violent protests by Palestinians and Israelis against the Apartheid Wall? ­Non-violent protesters met with violence and humiliation by Israeli armed forces? Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be reporting on the economic and geographic encirclement of Palestinian East Jerusalem and of the bisection of the West Bank and the subdivision of each region into dozens of isolated mini-prisons? Why aren't we being barraged by outraged reports about the Jewish-only bypass roads? About the hundreds of pointless internal checkpoints? About the countless untried executions and maimings? About the torture and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons? . . . Where were these hundreds of journalists when each of the 680 Palestinian children shot to death by Israeli soldiers over the last 5 years was laid to rest by grief-stricken family members? The shame of it all defies words. . . . Sharon's unilateral "Disengagement" plan is not ending the occupation of Gaza. The Israelis are not relinquishing control over the Strip. They are retaining control of all land, air and sea borders including the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza/Egypt border where the Egyptians may be allowed to patrol under Israel's watchful eye and according to Israel's strictest terms. The 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza remain prisoners in a giant penal colony, despite what their partisan leaders are attempting to claim. . . . When will the Palestinian history of 1948 and 1967, and of each passing day under the violence of dispossession and dehumanization, get a headline in our papers?

posted by LoZo 3:26 PM