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Iqbal Tamimi





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17:46 Jam'a al-yad, an artists' collective in Beirut, produced half a dozen powerful posters during the city's recent Israeli Apartheid Week. Though the most prominent captions on them are in Arabic, those could easily be translated into other languages, too.
You can access and download PDF versions of the posters here. Peronally, I don't endorse the one that seems to advocate stone-throwing, but the rest look great.
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17:29 The distinguished Palestinian historian and analyst Yezid Sayigh gave a tremendous talk Friday at the Palestine Center in Washington DC, where he reported on a recent, four-day visit to Gaza and assessed the situation and standing of the two rival Palestinian administrations in Gaza and Ramallah.
While he started off by noting that both the administrations have succeeded in stabilizing themselves since the terrible rift that occurred between them in June 2007, a lot of the content of what he said seemed clearly to indicate that he thinks the Hamas-led administration in Gaza has been significantly better at achieving more public goods at less cost than the Fayyad administration in Ramallah.
Sayigh is Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and is currently a visiting senior fellow at the crown center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the magisterial 1997 book Armed Struggle and the Search for a State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993, from Oxford University Press.
Kudos to Brandeis for having brought someone of Sayigh's stature and breadth as a scholar to stay there for this semester. And special kudos, of course, to the Palestine Center for hosting this talk. You can see the whole video of it, I think, here.
I can't do complete justice to the talk here, so I urge you to go and listen to it yourselves. But I wanted to share my impressions of some of his key insights and get them into the written-in-English public arena.
The original event was supposed to feature two speakers: Sayigh talking about Ramallah and Khaled Hroub, from Cambridge, UK, talking about Hamas. However, Hroub could not get his flight to DC-- because of the BA strike, I think, rather than any 'Flying While Arab' security issues. So Sayigh stepped in and gave us his analysis of both administrations; and we were lucky to hear it.
He referred to Ismail Haniyyeh's government in Gaza as "the elected government" and the Fayyad government in Ramallah as "the emergency government." Later he made a point of noting that-- while he has great personal affection for Salam Fayyad-- the Fayyad government is wholly unconstitutional, while he described the Haniyyeh government as "partly constitutional."
He underlined, regarding the Fayyad government, both the unconstitutionality of the way it was established and has been maintained since June 2007, and the rights-abusng nature of many of the practices of the security forces that are supposedly under Fayyad's command.
He did not say anything nearly as harsh about the rights practices of the Hamas-controlled security forces there. Indeed, he noted that during a four-day stay in Gaza back in January he was able to travel freely throughout the length of the Strip and,
The Haniyyeh government has been able to deliver many important public goods including public security. They deliver it with 12,000 police officers-- and they do it preciesly because they see public security as a public good.
Even though people say there are all kinds of abuses, I should note that a good number of the people I talked to there who were pro-Fateh or critics of Hamas from other political perspectives said the security situation had really improved since the situation before June 2007.
Sayigh said his main argument is that,
Fayyad’s achievements have been made with huge amount of help from international community and at some points from Israel. Whereas Hamas has done it in Gaza without any help from the west...
Since ’07, both government have instituted a certain degree of law and order… However, in the Fayyad government areas there have been major instances of abuses by intelligence agencies which don’t come under any control. Also, there is no parliament there. Any legislating that's done there is done through presidential decree.
In Gaza, you have 70,000 alleged 'government employees', of which 50,000 are in police-- all of whom are now being paid by Ramallah to stay home. So the internal-security challenge after June '07 was huge; and there has been a steep learning curve. They are no longer bringing in Qassam Brigades fighters to do civilian policing… And they've been implementing a series of mechanisms for adjudicating disputes, including reviving the Reconciliation Committees in the different localities, and some courts.
In Gaza, you have an economy that's almost entirely cash-based... Hamas offers a strong ethic of honesty that enables the money to circulate pretty efficiently. In cash terms the economy did better last year than it did before the war.
They have really adapted to some tough circumstances.
Both governments are hugely dependent on foreign aid.
The Fayyad government meanwhile is talking about a $2.8 billion budget, of which half is direct foreign aid.
Sayigh gave serious consideration to the security policies of both governments, and made these important points:
Both governments want to preserve themselves... Both are now in a holding pattern, unable to move forward with their political goals.
Everyone I talk to who knows about the West Bank thinks that Hamas enjoys huge support there, and were it not for Israel's overarching control there and the continuing Israeli raids into the supposedly Palestinian-controlled areas, Hamas would take over. People there support Hamas even though they also appreciate the relative normalization of daily life that the Fayyad government has brought. But they know that Fayyad is merely normalizing the situation under the continuing Israeli matrix of control, so they feel torn about it.
Fateh is dead. It has been for 20 yrs. It spends half its time criticizing Fayyad government and plotting against it...
Hamas’s political problem is that it sustains the propaganda position, for internal consumption, of martyrdom and struggle, while its actual position is to try to find a way into the negotiations. Some forces inside Hamas have sought to deal with this dilemma by focusing on something else completely: pietistic and proselytization campaigns.
Hamas has been doing everything it can for the last 15 months to keep its border with Israel quiet, and this has led to discontent in own ranks…
He warned that,
... The French and Spanish are now putting around the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state without borders. But does this mean anything, unless the government has sovereign control over the key levers of governance?
I worry that it’s going to be very hard to reintegrate the two territories because of the way things have evolved.
... The Haniyyeh government has used the administrative structures that were put into place in the 1990s, and has used them more efficiently and more adeptly than they were used before.
Sayigh confirmed the difficulty of this dilemma:
But it's also a sort of co-dependent relationship. In the West Bank, the PA people aren’t going to voluntarily give up their present perks and financial ‘security’, dissolve the PA and turn themselves into a National Resistance Council.
Sayigh said he had concluded in 2001 that the window of opportunity for the two-state solution had closed:
In 2001 I foresaw this period would last 10-15 yrs. Well, we're nine years into that now, so maybe we will see new a leadership or leaderships emerging.
... However, I don't think the one-state solution is yet seen as a serious program by most Palestinians on the ground.
He said the inability of the Hamas leadership to deliver on its big political program has led to the emergence of some salafist networks, of different types and orientations, and that some of these have supporters both inside some of the grassroots organizations of Hamas and some outside, though he indicated that these networks do not yet seem to pose an unmanageable threat to the leadership.
He said he didn't think it likely that the Netanyahu government-- or any other parties, including the U.S. and Egypt-- really wanted to make the siege so much tighter that it starts to threaten mass starvation inside Gaza. ("Imagine what that would do to the standing of the Fayyad government, if thousands of starving Gazans took to the streets or started marching towards Eretz.") And he reflected a little on why the Netanyahu government even continues to maintain the siege as tight as it does, since very evidently the siege is doing nothing to weaken the Haniyyeh government.
"I think the main reason is because Netanyahu doesn't dare to lift it and get accused of being 'soft' on Hamas," he said.
(Which indicates to me that if the U.S. and the rest of the so-called international community really wanted to lift the siege, they could-- and that would give Netanyahu the pretext he might fell he needs to present to his own voters, saying "Washington made me do it!". But of course, there are no indications yet that the U.S. government does want to see the siege lifted. And this the people of Gaza continue to suffer... )
Sayigh warned forcefully that if the Haniyyeh government should be brought down, it would not be replaced by any political force that would be more pro-western: "If we bring down Haniyyeh, we risk Gaza becoming Afghanistan," he said.
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17:24 Gilad Atzmon

Zionism, at least in its early days was premised on the belief that once back in their ‘homeland’, Jews would mature into ethical beings. For early Zionists it was the Diaspora conditions that corrupted the Jews. Ber Borchov blamed it on the difference between ‘the socio-economic structure of the Jewish people’ and other nations (Ber Borochov- The Economic Development of the Jewish People 1917). Max Nordau repelled the “Jewish lack of notion of honour, morality, patriotism and idealism…." (Max Nordau - Address at the 1st Zionist Congress 1897).
It is transparently evident that Zionism failed to erect a modern ethical collective. Considering the Zionist agenda to celebrate a Jewish national aspiration at the expense of the indigenous people of Palestine, it shouldn’t take us by surprise that Zionism evolved into an unethical morbid entity. As we read in a poll in Haaretz today. The Israelis themselves are coming to terms with their non-ethical setting. More than half of the Israelis are convinced that the leadership of their Jewish State is corrupted.
In a poll that took place in June 2009, 45% of respondents judged Netanyahu's government to be "highly corrupt," 25% thought it was "moderately corrupt" and the remaining third thought it was only slightly corrupt or not tainted.
However, Netanyahu still has a long way to go. Ehud Olmert won by a landslide. He is the most corrupt prime minister in Israeli history with 52% of the vote. Netanyahu placed second, with 17.8%, while Ariel Sharon was judged the third-most corrupt. Olmert currently faces charges that include fraud, breach of trust, forgery (of corporate documents) and failure to report income. Olmert is the first prime minister in Israeli history to face graft charges.
The majority of the Israelis polled feel that things are getting worse when it comes to ethics: 70% said they feel that Israel is more corrupt now than ever before, while only 10% think that matters are improving.
Unlike Borochov and Nordau who mistakenly identified Jewish cultural morbidity with Jewish Diaspora conditions it is pretty evident that the Jewish state has managed to establish a gruesome continuum between swindler Madoff and Jerusalem. The Israel that was there to become a celebration of a revived Jewish civilization, a light onto the nations, is in fact the epitome of moral deficiency in all its facets. It is the lowest form of political existence. Zionism has managed to erect the biggest and ugliest Jewish ghetto in Jewish history. The only positive news is that the Israelis seem to be aware of it all.
17:20
17:19 By Ben White on March 21, 2010
On March 17, the following note appeared on the Promised Land blog:
And this also happened this week: the office of the minister of education forbade distributing a booklet for kids about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because it didn’t like two articles in the declaration, as well as some of the illustration in the booklet.
The relevant link was to an article in Hebrew. I asked Noam which two articles had been specified, and he replied that the nrg.co.il article implied Article 14 and Article 18. These two articles are as follows:
“Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” (Article 14)
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” (Article 18)
But apart from that Hebrew language piece, there is also a translated version of the story available here. Here is an extract:
The Ariel municipality decided to buy hundreds of copies of the book to distribute them as a gift to kindergarten children. But after the Education Ministry’s intervention, the books were returned, even though they had already been bought with money and a message from the municipality pasted in them. This is because the Education Ministry inspectors from the state religious department did not like two illustrations and two sections of the declaration, and decided to disqualify the book…
Mayor Ron Nahman said, “it is positive and good to hand out a book about children’s rights. But our attention was drawn to two sentences that are not exactly what we teach the children. The Education Ministry said this was wrong and we accepted its decision.”
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17:09 eileen fleming

"There comes a time comes when silence is betrayal...History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people...We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims...We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people...The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy...Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right."-Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have demolished more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories. Some are considered “collateral damage” in military operations; such as the 4,000 homes that were demolished in Israel's December-January assault on Gaza.
Some are as collective punishment; such as the obliteration of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002.
Many are for lack of a building permit, which Israel denies to Palestinians; and due to the unjust justice system of Israel, the courts have ordered thousands of Palestinian families to demolish their own homes while threatening them with fines and imprisonment.
Currently there are tens of thousands of demolition orders on Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank .
The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an Occupying Power from extending its law and administration into an occupied territory.
The very process of granting or denying permits to Palestinians is blatantly illegal under international humanitarian law.
"Missing from Israel’s security framing is the very fact of occupation, which Israel both denies exists…and that “security” requires Israel control over the entire country…rendering impossible a just peace based on human rights, international law, reconciliation."- American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper, in Obstacles to Peace, A Re-Framing of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, page 1.
International Law states occupation is to be temporary, but Israeli courts rule on the basis that there is no occupation and therefore the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians under occupation is irrelevant to their sense of justice.
Jeff also informed this reporter, "Before 1947, the Palestinians owned 94% of the country. Then the UN gave away 56% to the Jews and today they have 78% of the land. Hamas cannot accept the legitimacy of Israel stealing their land, just as no colonial people would ever give up the claim to their homeland."
The first house ICAHD rebuilt was in 1998-the Beit Arabyia house-the name for the home of the Arabiya family with seven children which has been rebuilt at least four times by the efforts of ICAHD and the JCHR/Jurist Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO focused on legal advocacy for Palestinians in the Jerusalem area.
Jeff said, “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.”
The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed on May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired: "On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel
Jeff continued, "We really are only but actors in a play. When we wake up to that, and become an active participant in the human drama and pursue justice, things must change because injustice is unsustainable…One out of three Israeli children lives below the poverty line. It’s probably about 80% for Palestinians. Jews are like everyone else, those who have been abused grow up to be abusers. Things here have been turned on their head: its victim mentality and denial about the occupation. Once Israelis accept the fact that they are occupiers they will have to admit their State Terrorism.
"Since 1967 the Israeli government has destroyed over 22,000 Palestinian homes. 95% of the cases have nothing to do with security. All these homes are on Palestinian private property. The Israeli government will not grant permits for them to build on their own land, and in reality are quietly transferring the Palestinians administratively from the land. They make conditions so intolerable that the Palestinians give up and leave and this is exactly what they are after. Not only do the Palestinians receive no warning when their homes are to be destroyed they are fined $1,500.00!
"The reasons for the demolitions are: for The Wall, to establish illegal settlements, build roads and because the Israeli government wants to keep Palestinians confined to the islands [areas A and B] in the West Bank and so Palestinian land remain under the control of the Israeli government.
"When you incorporate occupied territories, highways, settlements and use resources it is all illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention which states the status quo must be retained so that negotiations can happen. Unilateral actions are illegal. The occupying power is responsible for those under its control.
"Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA. This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention.
"There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.
"In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa!
"The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.
"Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side.
"Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground.
"Israeli policy is to maintain a 72% Jewish and 28% Arab population. Palestinians cannot get building permits to build upon their legally owned land. The Arab land has been re-zoned as green space, and the green space will be re-zoned for the settlements.
"Every single Palestinian home in Jerusalem has a demolition order. The entire West Bank has been zoned as agricultural land by Israel, and that will also be re-zoned again for more settlements."
Under international law all the settlements are considered illegal colonies-but they are spun as "neighborhoods" by politicians and a limp and lazy media.
During an ICAHD bus tour in Nov. 2007, on our way to the Beit Arabiya Peace House, we witnessed acres of tree stumps that had once been miles of olive trees; but they were chopped off by the Israeli army.
Jeff commented, "It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. I don’t just have a political problem with this Judiaization of the Old City; it is ecologically and environmentally offensive."
It also is spiritually impoverished for the raping and pillaging of what is claimed holy ground refutes and denies the biblical meaning of dominion. The ancients understood dominion meant to nurture, love and protect but the destruction of indigenous peoples homes, the stealing and destroying of their legally owned property, has got to be an abomination unto God as well as a crime against humanity.
The Beit Arabiya Peace House, is at the crossroads of Areas A, B and C and the home has become a symbol of nonviolent persistent resistance and a meeting place for Israelis, Palestinian and International peace activists at the intersection of Areas A, B, and C. The smallest of the three is Area A, which is under Palestinian authority. Areas B and C are under Israeli control.
When I saw Jeff last in June 2009, he told me there was another demolition order of the Beit Arabyia home, but during my visit there, I was captivated by a mural painted on the outer wall created by the North American Workers Against the USA occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The mural depicted Rachel Corrie, the American who was run over by a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza when she stood up to defend the home of a pharmacist with five children four days before the USA began bombing Baghdad. Also depicted was a pregnant Palestinian woman of ten who had also been run over by a Caterpillar in Gaza.
The angelic images of the two women floated above a depiction of a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer that had tipped to one side and was flanked by tanks and images of weapons of destruction along with images of people and a railroad track; a reminder that prior to 1948, Jews and Palestinians had worked together in peaceful solidarity to build a railroad.
The Arabyia home/Peace Center is at the cornerstone of the village of the Anata and the Shufat refugee camps, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news: "I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see." [Jeremiah 6:7]
Mohammad Alatar, film producer of "The Iron Wall" addressed my group after we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family:
"I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it.
"What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues.
"Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address."
The Obama Administration has demanded Israel freeze all construction of its illegal settlements; but the building continues. Money talks louder than words and people of conscience are exerting pressure to get Israel to change its behavior. The quickest and most effective way to do this is by ending U.S. military aid, which is being misused by Israel in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians and sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.
Vanunu's Message to Hillary Clinton re: The Apartheid Wall
Learn More:
"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction." Dr. William Osler, (1849-1919)
"He who allows oppression, shares the crime."- Erasmus Darwin
-###-
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine
Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
[www.youtube.com]
17:02 “You shall not oppress the stranger [immigrant] because you know the soul of the stranger for you yourselves were immigrants in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9) [translation, R.S.]
This verse recalls the migration of Jacob’s sons to Egypt during an ancient Israelite famine. It invokes the history of oppression that Jews suffered there as economic migrants who ultimately escaped slavery at the hands of Pharaoh during the miraculous exodus orchestrated by Moses during the holiday we are about the celebrate, Passover.

Ruth and Naomi (Leonard Baskin)
The Bible calls on Jews to treat immigrants (the term ger in Hebrew, which is often translated as “stranger”) with respect no less than eight different times in at least four different books. In addition, there is the deeply moving story of the Book of Ruth, whose entire plot revolves around an Israelite economic migrant, Naomi, who travels with her family to Moab to escape famine at home (not unlike current Israeli immigrants from Sudan, Ethiopia and Asia). While in Moab, Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women, but when the sons and her husband die, she decides to return to Israel and urges Ruth, her daughter-in-law, to return to her Moabite family. Ruth refuses with one of the most gracious, moving speeches to grace the entire Tanach:
“Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17)
In more recent history, we have the accounts of righteous Gentiles who gave Jews refuge during the Holocaust at great risk to themselves and their families. Conversely, we have a darker history of those like the Roosevelt administration which turned Jews away from ports of refuge, as the St. Louis was shunned when it unsuccessfully attempted to deposit 900 Jewish refugees in the New World
This is not a general subject that is peripheral, but rather is at the heart of Judaism. Without the tender mercy of strangers, we might have long ago ceased to exist as a people. Therefore, we see ourselves as a generous people, one attuned to suffering and therefore bound to treat the stranger in our midst with kindness and respect.
So how else should a Jew react when they read disgusting incitement (for the full effect in the original Hebrew, read here) from none other than a member of the Israeli Knesset, Yaakov “Ketzeleh” Katz, who is also a prominent extremist settler leader. Here Katz (whose nickname oddly invokes the Yiddish diminutive for “kitty-cat”) inveighs against the thousands of economic migrants pouring into Israel’s economy from dire African places like Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. One linguistic note: the term “infiltrator” used here has a charged connotation in modern Hebrew, as it historically referred to Palestinian fighters who “infiltrated” Israel to engage in terror attacks:
The State of Israel is facing a hard problem: Between 1,000 and 2,000 persons infiltrate each month through the porous southern border…In an increasing arithmetic progression we will reach, in six or seven years, 75,000 or 100,000 African infiltrators, most of whom will live in Tel Aviv…
With a century of hard labor, Am Yisrael has built here a Jewish state. In ten years, these infiltrators could make it all go to waste. We are losing the state to insanity.
…Our committee has visited schools and kindergartens in Arad and we couldn’t believe our eyes: The city is slowly being taken over. The schools in Arad and Eilat are filling up with Eritrean and Sudanese children. Already, close to a tenth of the city’s inhabitants are Sudanese or Eritrean, Muslims and Christians.
We got used to thinking that we are defeating our enemies in battles and here they have surprised us from the rear. The rulers of Sudan and Eritrea, in collusion with the Egyptians are conquering Israel.
Note in this passage, echoes of the Nativist rants of yesteryear against the oncoming hordes and unwashed masses bearing hard down on our shores. Note the language akin to that used to describe a plague of locusts or other form of vermin. The racism is mind-boggling. Also note that Katz, comfortably ensconced in his West Bank settlement home, is attempting to gin up hysterical fear among the wealthy denizens of Tel Aviv’s northern suburbs, which are akin to places like Evanston, Scarsdale, Beverly Hills and Napa Valley in the U.S.
…The infiltrators are penetrating Hatikva neighborhood, are flooding south Tel Aviv and every day they advance a few tens of meters towards Dizengoff on their way to Akirov and Ramat Aviv…As I see it, there is no choice but for the prime minister to declare martial law for everything regarding infiltrators.
In the following passage, Katz suggests establishing an entire city for migrants that would be a cross between a concentration camp and Hooverville:
…I have suggested…to start [constructing] a city that will be a decent distance from the border, where only there the infiltrators will be allowed to live. They will be employed in government projects for building the city itself [and] building the border fence [to prevent further immigration].
It may be that this kind of labor would take it’s toll on the infiltrators in a way that they will advise their relatives not to follow in their footsteps to Israel. They may even wish to pay again $2,500 per head to the corrupt guides who brought them here, this time in order to return them to their home.
For some time no one is surprised how many of Tel Aviv’s residents are willing to sell Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. But it is unbelievable for me to behold how it does not bother them that their own city is becoming Eritrean and Sudanese. A thought sneaks to my mind that this secular, liberal and elitist community has simply lost all will to live…Is this what they hoped for when they built their homes in Tel Aviv? That it will become an African city? What kind of person wants to sell himself and his home? [translation: Eitan Issacson]
The Jewish people both within and outside Israel should know that when they continue supporting the Occupation, they are supporting racism like this. Do we want to be judged and measured as a people by the hate of such hooligans? Further, I challenge the settlers who define Judaism and Jewish values for us as they do here in the comment threads. Theirs is not Judaism. It is a perversion of Judaism. Let’s call it Judea-ism, an idolatry based on worship of land over the spiritual values which our Biblical Prophets represented. We do not need a Third Temple in order to be good Jews. We do not need armed outposts in Hebron to maintain our covenant with God. Let us take back our religion from such people. They do not represent us, nor should they represent Israel.
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THE “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” IS DEAD
LEARN SOME OF THE “WHY” BEING KEPT FROM YOU
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chief’s Chairman Mike Mullen have all recently visited Israel on two issues, reliable information that Israel was planning an attack on Iran, a plan designed to push America into a war our leaders believe is both wrong and likely to risk a global nuclear confrontation with Russia and the building of a massive housing project on the Arab side of Jerusalem in violation of numerous agreements, a project that is likely to cause a spike in world terrorism and send thousands of new fighters to Afghanistan to face American forces there.
This is the worst point in the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel since the founding of that nation in 1948 but these are not the only reasons, not these and the arrogant and intractable attitude of Israel’s leaders nor being caught in lie after lie, lies told to their financial backer and closest ally, the United States. Here is some background on CENTOM Commander, General Petraeus’ shocking briefing:
On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region…
“Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell… pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. … Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.
Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister:
“This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.
The deterioration started long before this and can be tracked by changing perceptions in the Obama administration whose leaders are heavily “pro-Israel” but lack the extremist convictions of the Zionist/extremist group that surrounded President Bush. When Obama took office, even Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, one of the most prominent Israeli proponents in the country, had become aware of the extent of Israeli involvement in areas that had taken the “special relationship” into an area of disaster for the United States. This is what was discovered:
With nearly all Arab/Muslim governments aligned behind the US, including a softening of tensions with Iran, Israel feels it must act quickly. However, the US no longer has any strategic requirement for a relationship with Israel. What had been seen as a potential ally, perhaps now wrongly so, in the region is now generally perceived as a “runaway train” that the United States can no longer go to the United Nations time after time to protect from sanctions, 32 times thus far. Israel clearly feels it has the United States “over a barrel” with control of media, a massive AIPAC lobby working against American policy and huge new financial influence over the upcoming Congressional elections handed over to them by the highly controversial 5/4 Supreme Court “free speech” election funding decision clearly meant to aid Israel further in her ability to intimidate Congress.
Unofficially, Israel has moved to the top of America’s “terrorist watch list” and is now drifting toward “evildoer” status, not only by the White House but, more broadly, through top defense officials who now perceive Israel as a threat to the United States.
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15:56 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will press the American administration during his upcoming visit to Washington to release sophisticated bunker-busting bombs needed for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, the Sunday Times reported in its website.
Netanyahu will leave for the United States on Sunday evening in order to attend a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is also expected to meet with senior administration officials.
In Washington, Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A meeting with President Barack Obama is in the works.
The Scotland Herald reported last week that hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs were shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.
The newspaper quoted a manifest from the US navy as saying that the shipment included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.
Experts told the paper that the ammunition was being put in place for an assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Herald said, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971.
According to the newspaper, the preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision.
The London Weekly said that for the first time since Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, Israel has agreed to ease the blockade on the Strip, discuss all core issues during the proximity talks, with the condition of reaching final conclusions only in direct talks with the PA.
It added that Netanyahu will seek returns for the concessions, asking Washington to provide the IAF with the ‘bunker-buster’ bombs.
Without proof, Israel and the West accuse Iran of using its enrichment program to build a nuclear bomb, a charge Tehran firmly denies.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued on Saturday a Persian New Year’s address to Iranians, in which he said that Iran would resist Western pressure even more determinedly in the coming year.”
Notes/Sources:
The above article was written by Al Manar Staff;entitled: “Netanyahu to Ask Obama for Bunker Buster Bombs against Iran”.The article can be found on Al Manar.
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March 20, 2010 As if destroying a country and its culture ain’t bad enough, how about destroying its future, its children? I want to scream it from the rooftops! We are complicit in crimes of such enormity that I find it difficult to find the words to describe how I feel about this crime committed in my name! In the name of the 'civilized’ world?
According to Dahr Jamail,
Even the BBC was forced to acknowledge the reality (Listen: 'Child deformities 'increasing’ in Falluja’ The short piece posted on the BBC Website ends thus:
End of story as far as the BBC is concerned. So how come this isn’t a headline? Even Stop the War Coalition barely mentions it, more concerned it seems with the plight of imperialism’s warriors, Britain’s warriors who have shooting this foul stuff at not only Iraq’s innocents but at the innocents of the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. But then we are the citizens of Empire which explains why Stop the War has little or nothing to say on the subject.
British and US government statements that Depleted Uranium is a 'conventional’ weapon are contradicted by the facts:
So come on all you allegedly civilized people, what are you going to about it? PS: Oh, I forgot about the DU weapons supplied to Israel by the US, also dropped on the people of Gaza. |
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Days after our tough talking Vice President Joe Biden returned from his trip to Israel with a handful of broken glass, the Obama administration announced that it has blocked delivery of armaments slated for delivery to the state of Israel. This announcement brought cheers and jeers from opposite ends of the political spectrum while leaving those in the middle, well…perplexed.
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13:17 URGENT ACTION: Protest against Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Monday 22nd March, 5pm, LondonPalestine Solidarity Camoaign
Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem behind the announcement of 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem, will be visiting London early next week. A total of 50,000 housing units have [www.haaretz.com] [www.haaretz.com] href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155639.html">planned in the coming years - doubling the settler population - and reducing the Palestinian population to a third. Israel's plans to restore Hurva synagogue a few hundred meters from Al-Aqsa mosque has led to clashes over the last few days - men under 50 have been refused entry into Al-Aqsa since Friday. Israel has deployed some 3,000 security forces across the city.
He will be speaking at Chatham House (10 St James's Square, London SW1Y 4LE). Come along and protest against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Friends of Al Aqsa; Friends of Lebanon, Friends of Sabeel UK, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Britain Palestine Twinning Network.
You can let Chatham House know what you think about their recent briefing ‘Jerusalem: the Cost of Failure' and the event by ringing 020 7957 5700 or emailing: contact@chathamhouse.org.uk.
13:05 U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has made a visit to the Gaza Strip and repeated his condemnation of the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt. Meanwhile, international efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiations are stepping up.It seems to have escaped his notice that the blockade is being imposed by rather powerful extremists.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came the region to press Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations. On Sunday, while visiting the Gaza Strip, he condemned Israel for the blockade it and Egypt have on the enclave.
"I have repeatedly made it quite clear to Israel's leaders that the Israeli policy of closure is not sustainable and that it is wrong," Mr. Bn said. "It poses unacceptable suffering of human beings. This policy is also counterproductive. It undercuts moderates and empowers extremists."
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Crime sceneBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
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Crime sceneBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
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