Gilad Atzmon: The Wannsee Conference- Truth and Myth

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 8:10AM

Gilad Atzmon

Last week, as Jewish Lobbies continue to invest enormous efforts in dictating and imposing a rigid and unquestionable Holocaust narrative, Israeli Haaretz published a short, succinct and courageous report challenging the validity of the Wannsee Conference as proof of the Nazi final solution.

Just ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, the Israeli paper reported that Dr. Norbert Kampe (63), director of the “Wannsee Conference” Memorial Centre in Berlin, has challenged some of the most widely-accepted historical facts associated with the conference and its meaning.

Jewish Holocaust scholars have always insisted that the master plan for the Nazi Judeocide was conceived at the Wannsee Conference but Dr. Kampe is quoted as saying that the conference dealt only with “operational matters”‌ instead of being a platform of any form of “decision making”‌. To prove his point, Kampe pointed to the fact that Hitler and his ministers were not present at the conference. Furthermore, he says, “At the time, January 1942, there was no organized plan for extermination camps.”

And yet, Haaretz admits, “Make no mistake. Kampe is not anti-Semitic. Certainly not a Holocaust denier. On the contrary. As expected of a professional historian, he studied countless relevant texts, documents and testimonies on the particular event…His conclusion is the direct outcome of an educated analysis of written material in his possession.”‌

So courageously, a Hebrew paper praises Kampe and his “fascinating historical lesson”‌ and also acknowledges that the Israeli Ministry of Education lacks the capacity to engage in any form of informed Holocaust debate. Haaretz clearly admits that

“to this day no one knows with complete certainty and confidence what exactly happened on 20 January 1942, in this pretty villa in the wealthy suburb of Berlin.”‌

Only one copy of the Wansee Conference protocol, found in 1947, survived the war, others having been deliberately destroyed by the Nazis in an effort to conceal evidence. This protocol is the only authentic documentation as to what happened in Wannsee and one of the few that made explicit use of the term “final solution”. However, Haaretz concedes that, like any historical document, the Wannsee document should be read carefully. The words “death” or “murder” do not appear in the conference protocol. Instead, it refers to “natural diminution”, “appropriate treatment”, “other solution options” and “different forms of solutions.” In fact, the only explicit references in the document deal with deportation rather than extermination. Even the famous table attached to the protocol that counts the Jews in each occupied country, does not state that those Jews are destined to be destroyed.

Just a few days ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, a Hebrew paper found the courage to admit that “decades of Holocaust research could not find a clear and explicit command made by high-level Nazi officials to engage in systematic mass extermination of Jews.”‌

According to the Israeli paper, the Nazis disguised their true intentions in some “ambiguous orders and”secret codes”‌, which were supposed to lead officers to interpret and to react upon what they believed to be Hitler’s will.

The moral here is simple. Once again we learn that some Israelis are far ahead of the Western press and academia in their criticism of Jewish ideology in general and the Zionist Holocaust narrative in particular.

Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Zionist’s global interests and influence Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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Likely Hezbollah Drone Explodes at Secret Israeli Airbase

Monday, January 30, 2012 at 8:59AM Gilad Atzmon

Source

An exclusive report from a confidential highly-placed Israeli source says that a booby-trapped drone crashed and exploded at the top-secret Israeli airbase Sdot Micha. Sdot Micha (also profiled here) is the home of the Israeli missile arsenal including its long-range Jerichos capable of striking Iran. There were civilian and military eyewitnesses to the crash, which happened within the perimeter fence of the facility, which covers a large area just outside Bet Shemesh.

Sdot Micha airbase

The eyewitnesses and Israel’s wish to avoid pressure to retaliate against the Iranians, necessitated the publication of a media cover story. The story claims an advanced Israeli drone crashed near the Yesodot moshav, 10 miles from Sdot Micha. Israel also claims the drone took off from Tel Nof airbase. Eyewitnesses may be able to produce video documentation of the precise location of the crash unless it is impounded by the IDF.

The cover story reminds me in crucial ways of a similar one put out by the U.S. when it lost control of its advanced drone inside Iran. It did everything in its power to make the world believe that the drone crashed by accident and we vehemently denied it was brought down by Iranian electronic warfare capability. The more we denied the more people believed we were protesting too much.

Though crashing a drone inside Israel would appear to have Iran’s fingerprints all over it (they would certainly have greatest motivation), it’s hard to believe that Iran could fly a drone 1,000 miles with such precision. So blame will inevitably fall upon Hezbollah, a Syrian-Iranian ally, which often procures its most advanced weaponry from Iran. Hezbollah would’ve launched the drone from southern Lebanon. But I find it unlikely it could master the technological know-how to bring this off without Iranian engineering assistance.

There were no Israeli casualties and the drone explosion caused no significant damage at the base. But the very fact that Iran or its allies have escalated the psychological war of nerves in such a fashion will raise the temperature inside Israel once the true story is known. It will confirm among the hawks like Bibi, Barak and Bogie Yaalon the imperative to attack Iran. And the average Israeli man in the street will be that much more accepting of war given this new level of threat. But the “beauty” (if such a phrase is appropriate) of a drone attack is that, like the Mossad assassination of nuclear scientists, it’s hard to figure out precisely who is to blame for the attack. In that sense, it raises the temperature, but does so in a carefully calibrated way.

The fact that Israel could not detect such a threat and stop it before it did its damage indicates also some gaps in Israel’s defensive systems. Admittedly, drones are hard to defend against and Iran/Hezbollah may not have many at their disposal. But they clearly can do significant damage as we’ve seen from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. Imagine a drone equipped with a warhead (the current one appeared only to be booby-trapped, but not equipped with a warhead or missile) taking aim at the Kirya? That, of course, would be the next stage of development and one Israel might expect in the not too distant future. Certainly, a far more sophisticated step than merely crashing a drone into an airbase. But by no means beyond the realm of possibility for Iranian engineers at some point.

I have always argued that there is a price to pay for Israel’s black ops campaign against Iran. In this case, the price was very low. But it will not always be so. There’s always a price to pay. The only question is when you’ll have to pay and how much.

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Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble: Eye of Newt and the ‘Invented’ Palestinians

 

“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to have a history of deserting the women in his life precisely at moments they find themselves battling debilitating illnesses. Gingrich divorced his first wife, Jackie, as she was being treated for cancer, and then said adios to his second wife, Marianne, after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The 68-year-old is now on his third marriage…”

By Richard Edmondson

Normally I don’t write a whole lot on presidential politics for the simple reason that it’s such a Zionist-controlled cesspool it often seems hardly worth commenting on. Moreover, it has always struck me as intellectually dishonest to single out this or that Republican—as a lot of leftwing bloggers do—for criticism, when the Democrats, including the one presently in the White House, are just as bad if not worse. Even so, here are a few items I couldn’t let pass, the first having to do with Newt Gingrich’s comment about the Palestinians being an “invented” people.
Gingrich seems like a reasonably intelligent fellow, and I’m guessing he knows enough about American history to know that white Europeans were not the original Americans. Here are what the original Americans looked like:

Here is what Gingrich looks like:

Gingrich is a white European. For white Europeans to come to America and kill off and displace the original Americans, turn around and claim to be the rightful owners of the land, all the while designating themselves as “Americans” while consigning the original Americans to squalid reservations in the process—very much required a considerable amount of “inventing.” So where does Gingrich get off accusing another people of being “invented”?

Here is what those whom Gingrich dismisses as “invented” look like. These are the original, native, indigenous Palestinians. Notice the brown skin—very similar in shade to the original Americans…

…however, these are Semites. Semites are the people indigenous to the Middle East—just like Native Americans are the people indigenous to America. In other words, the Middle East is the part of the planet Earth in which these people originated. Am I going too fast for you, Newt? Slow me down if I am.

Now as it so happens, there is one other group of people I would like to mention—Ashkenazi Jews. Here is what an Ashkenazi Jew looks like (who happens to be named Benjamin Netanyahu.):

 

Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites. They are white Europeans. Compare the two photos. Notice a certain familial resemblance:

 

Let me repeat: Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites, they are white Europeans. For white European/Ashkenazis to come to Palestine and kill off and displace the original Semites, turn around and claim to be the rightful owners of the land, all the while designating themselves as “Semites” while consigning the original Semites to squalid reservations in the process—very much required a certain amount of “inventing.”

(Yes, I know—the terrain is starting to get repetitious, but given the subject matter, it’s inevitable.)

 

U.S. map showing Native American reservations

Occupied Palestine map showing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

Are “Ashkenazi Jews” an invented people? Gingrich should avail himself of a book written by a man named Shlomo Sand. And before he makes any more references to the Palestinians as “invented” he should actually, well, open the book and read it. Of course, we don’t know if he’ll bother to do that. Gingrich’s comment about the Palestinians is the bombast of an ignoramus, but rather than suffer public rebuke over his utterance, Gingrich, who in 1999 resigned from Congress after being found guilty of ethics violations, was rewarded with a $5 million check from Zionist Sheldon Adelson—with an additional $5 million donation recently being announced by Adelson’s wife.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to have a history of deserting the women in his life precisely at moments they find themselves battling debilitating illnesses. Gingrich divorced his first wife, Jackie, as she was being treated for cancer, and then said adios to his second wife, Marianne, after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The 68-year-old is now on his third marriage. It was the second wife, Marianne, who recently offered some telling revelations about her former husband in an interview with ABC News, disclosing, among other things, that Gingrich wanted to have an “open marriage” in which he would be free to see other women while still remaining married to her—a request Marianne rejected. Moreover, it seems there was one woman in particular Newt was desirous of spending time with—the blonde congressional aide who went on to become his present wife, Callista.

 

Gingrich and wife Callista in November of 2000–3 months after their wedding

 Marianne today

Marianne told ABC her husband had been advised by the doctor treating her for MS that stress should be avoided, but that this evidently did not stop him from moving for a divorce just months after she had been diagnosed.

In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an “open marriage” arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.

She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.

“And I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do,'” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. “He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”

Marianne described her “shock” at Gingrich’s behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.”

He always called me at night,” she recalled, “and always ended with ‘I love you.’ Well, she was listening.”

Perhaps even more eye-brow-raising is that, according to ABC, all this was going on at the same time Gingrich was publicly denouncing Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. If you go to the ABC link and watch the video, you’ll see film footage taken from that era showing Gingrich declaring in a speech he delivered, “There’s no administration in American history with less moral authority than the Clinton-Gore administration.”

One would be hard-pressed to point to a more glaring example of hypocrisy. What are we to make of the fact that such an unscrupulous hypocrite has been embraced by a prominent and wealthy Zionist contributor? Does this not tell us something about, a) presidential politics in America, and, b) the state of Israel itself?

Adelson’s support is widely acknowledged as having been a key factor in Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary. According to Wikipedia, the casino magnate, with a net worth of $21.5 billion, is the 8^th wealthiest American and 16^th wealthiest person in the world. Speaking of Gingrich, Adelson has said , “There is not a better advocate for Israel”—and now thanks to this spigot of wealth, the Georgia Republican has notched up his first presidential primary win. Could there possibly be a plainer, more illustrative example of how Zionism, and Zionist money, have corrupted American politics?

And here’s another rhetorical question: Why does Israel seem to draw so much of its support from some of the most corrupt people on the planet? What is it about the Zionist state that they find so likeable and praiseworthy? I’m not simply talking about the 535 members of the U.S. Congress. No. From France to Germany, from Britain to America, from Belgium to the Netherlands to Denmark, from Spain to Italy to Greece, and from the IMF to the World Bank to the UN Security Council—virtually throughout the entire Western world—the most seriously corrupt, repressive, and dishonest specimens of humanity walking upright on the earth all seem to share one thing in common: they all love Israel.

Imagine that.

All of which brings me to a second point—one which I very much wanted to make about the American political system (although it probably applies to the political systems in all the other countries mentioned as well): namely that it’s a rigged game. It is rigged to ensure that one outcome and one outcome only will occur. Moreover it’s an outcome that will occur repetitively, over and over, time and time again, regardless of the changing faces, the evolving issues, or the advancing body of human thought and knowledge. What I’m speaking of is this: that the system is geared to ensure that the only candidates who stand more than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected are the absolute dregs of American society. The most unprincipled. The most corrupt. The most deceitful, profligate, hypocritical, and immoral. The absolute dregs. This is the way the process has been engineered.

In her interview with ABC, Marianne expressed the opinion that Gingrich “lacks the moral character to be president,” but with all due respect to this good lady who endured 18 years of marriage to a hypocrite, she seems a bit confused as to what exactly the job qualifications are for serving as chief executive in this country. Certainly—as we all know—there are bright and talented Americans, Americans who, if given the chance, could, and definitely would, bring the country out of the morass in which it presently finds itself, people of courage, honor, and rectitude, people who remain true to their principles, who would react with indignation were someone to offer them money to invade another country and kill millions of its people, and who would probably even have the person offering such a bribe arrested. Yes. There are lots of Americans like that. They are all over the place. Quite literally. But the thing to keep in mind is that these are the very last people the top 1 percent would ever, ever want to see running the country. Far preferable to them are the moral degenerates. Moral degenerates and miscreants are invariably the ones who get the most money and most media attention, and don’t for a moment believe that’s by accident. As I say the system is rigged. There is no longer anything even resembling a democracy.

Another presidential issue I wanted to comment on, and which kind of ties in with everything I said about Gingrich, is Mitt Romney’s recent impromptu encounter with an Occupy Wall Street protester. Here it is. Check it out.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

Now let me see if I understand him correctly. Romney is saying that the rich should continue getting richer and the poor poorer (the trend of the last 30 years or so), and anyone who objects to this state of affairs is being—“divisive”? It isn’t merely that his logic fails the infallibility test. The twin arguments he’s advancing—that wealth should be concentrated and that America should remain united—are diametrically, contradictorily opposed to one another. Wealth disparity, by definition, is a divide. It is a divide between rich and poor. America is very much a divided nation at this moment. It is a country in which CEOs make 325 times the average worker’s pay (up from 263 times as recently as 2009). By trying to reduce economic inequality, the OWS movement is essentially trying to restore unity to the country. If Romney really wanted a united America—rather than an America with a vast gulf between rich and poor—he would actually champion the OWS protesters rather than attack them, but we won’t hear anything like that from Romney because the richest 1 percent are funding his campaign.

Romney, who by the way also insists that corporations are people , vows that if elected president, his first foreign policy trip will be to Israel. No surprise there. But perhaps we could expect him to make a stop at the Cayman Islands on his way home. According to his tax returns, Romney holds a stake in an enterprise called BCIP Trust Associates III, but regulatory filings show that the partnership, valued at $5 million to $25 million, is registered in the Cayman Islands. This presumably would render it sheltered from U.S. taxation. However, with the predictability of a military press office flack denying civilian casualties in the latest drone attack, Romney’s campaign spokesperson, Andrea Saul, has insisted everything is strictly legal and on the up and up.

“The Romney’s investments in funds established in the Cayman Islands are taxed in the very same way they would be if those funds were established in the United States. These are not tax havens and it is false to say so.”

Romney and his wife Ann made $27 million in 2010, and up until that same year held millions in a Swiss bank account. Despite this, their 2010 federal tax rate worked out to 13.9 percent, “a rate typical of households earning about $80,000 a year,” reported the New York Times.

As I said, it’s a bit intellectually dishonest to criticize Republicans while omitting the sins of the Democrats, so let’s talk for a moment about Obama. In his state of the union address last week (full text here ), the chief executive spouted a lot of faux populism, painting himself as a man of action who intends to impose new regulations on Wall Street and close loopholes favoring the rich (apparently hoping people will forget that Wall Street bankers have consistently been among his biggest backers), while championing average Americans. In fact this seems to be his strategy for defeating the Republicans this year: let them flap their jaws about the wonders of the “free market” system while in turn casting himself as a populist—when in fact he is every bit as pro-rich as the Republicans are. In this respect, Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And of course, significantly missing from his speech was any mention of his recent signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, giving the military the authority to arrest U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial, essentially shredding the last remnants of our constitutional safeguards. It is an ominous, ill-boding development (one of many these days, it seems) that places all of us in jeopardy.

But bad as the NDAA is—and it is indeed bad—that is not the only issue pertaining to the current president that merits attention. A recent campaign video has been the focus of considerable discussion of late, a video so bad, so exaggerated in terms of its worshipful tones, its deference to the Israeli lobby, that it seems to have left some people almost literally cringing. We see images of Obama wearing a yarmulke, visiting the Western Wall, etc.—as well as footage from various speeches in which he extols the virtues of the Zionist state, not his own country mind you, but Israel. Take a look:

The tone is quite reverential, would you not agree? Particularly striking I think is this image:

 

Obama is in essence worshipping at the altar of the Holocaust religion. Ali Abunimah, at the Electronic Intifada, says the video “takes Israel pandering to dangerous levels,” but actually even more than that is going on. The video is in essence presenting the Zionist state as an object of religious adoration. This is the kind of thing you’d expect to see at a Christians United for Israel conference—not from the Obama campaign. “When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries in which the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland.” What we have here basically is adulation to a deity. Israel is being deified. And of course interjected through it all are Israeli officials bestowing their kosher seal of approval upon the U.S. head of state.

A question has arisen as to whether this is actually an “official” Obama campaign video—or possibly something put together simply to make the commander-in-chief of the United States look like a beggarly, brownnosing fawner. In point of fact, though, if you examine closely you will see that it appears to have been uploaded to YouTube by BarackObamadotcom. So yes, it does look as if it’s a genuine campaign video. But of course, what would you expect? Populist rhetoric is all well and good—it plays well to the masses—but it takes fawning to get Zionist money, and it takes Zionist money to get elected.

And so it goes in the rigged system of U.S. politics. And of course if all else fails, our 1 percent may always fall back upon the electronic voting machines to ensure this year’s election results are the ones they desire…

“For a charm of power trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble…”

***

The Smirk

Thought I would throw this into the mix (or the cauldron, if you prefer) as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being smirk quite this often in a 23-minute time segment as does one of the guests on this program. Are facial expressions an indicator of what resides in the heart? Speaking purely subjectively here—and based upon my own limited contact with habitual smirkers—the thing we see forming and dissipating…forming and dissipating…at periodic intervals throughout much of the show, seems to suggest something abnormal, an almost psychopathological disgust for any and all things decent.

One statement made on the show is in fact correct, however. The American people are not sheep. They are in fact much worse off than sheep. Sheep follow a herd instinct, a trait that is in their DNA. The herd instinct is a product of nature, one that functions to help ensure the survival of the entire herd, not simply single individuals, and it is a behavior observable in many species of animals. What the American people have succumbed to is not an innate, naturally-occurring herd instinct, but something far more sinister.

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Jews in Iran

Monday, January 30, 2012 at 3:38AM Gilad Atzmon

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Fear of Abuse in Libyan Prisons Haunts New Libya

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1326407570.html

Documents with photographs and details of people wanted by the Libyan External Security office are seen in the abandoned office where Muammar Gaddafi’s former spy chief and foreign minister Moussa Koussa was based in Tripoli 3 September 2011. (Photo: REUTERS – Anis Mili)

By: Ali al-Mabrouk

Published Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Allegations of torture made against Libya’s rebel forces have prompted a major humanitarian organization to halt its operations in the country. Libyan authorities, however, strongly reject accusations that such abuses are taking place.

Misrata – The issue of human rights in Libya after the fall of its dictatorial regime remains a controversial one. This is especially true in light of criticisms by international humanitarian organizations over what is happening in prisons run by the new Libyan authorities.
All eyes were on Misrata (east of Tripoli) during the revolution against former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, thanks to its resilience against a lengthy blockade imposed by the former regime’s brigades.

The city is back in the spotlight after a report by the organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was issued last Thursday, which announced that it was stopping its operations at detention centers in Misrata because of what it described as the exposure of detainees to torture.

However, the authorities in the city were surprised by these accusations, and the head of the national security agency in Misrata, Ibrahim Beit al-Mal, rejected MSF’s allegations in an interview with Al-Akhbar, saying that the information in the report was not true.

He described the report by the organization as “mendacious” and said it had come to serve an agenda hostile to the 17 February revolution.

In contrast to the MSF report, Beit al-Mal stressed that the prisoners were treated well and received excellent care and attention, in addition to the provision of food throughout the day.

As for the national security prison, which contains 680 inmates, he explained that he has dealt with human rights organizations with complete transparency and allowed them to inspect the prison and meet prisoners without any conditions or constraints.

In the same context, the official previously responsible for the security committee prison in Misrata, Ali Aswiti, denied that there had been any cases of beating or torture inside the prison.
He said that if any such cases were uncovered, the mistreatment would most likely have occurred before the detainees were handed over to the security committee and were probably due to the actions of an irresponsible individual. He was taken aback by the decision of the organization which “ran counter to the situation inside the prison.”

For his part, the deputy chair of the National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, Abdul Basit Abu Mazairiq, asked the office of the public prosecutor to open an investigation into MSF’s “allegations” and “to hold accountable officials and pseudo-rebels who are trying to discredit the revolution.”

Abu Mazairiq, who was the official spokesman for the rebels in Misrata, spoke to Al-Akhbar on behalf of the human rights council, saying: “This council has its own character and independent financial standing, answerable directly to the legislative authorities while enjoying wide powers to monitor the performance of the government.”

He continued, saying: “Its members have the status of law enforcement officers, meaning that they can collect evidence at the scene of any crime carried out against human rights. The law requires that prosecutors provide the council with the results of any investigation referred to them by the council or any case that is related to human rights.”

Abu Mazairiq, who is a lawyer, a playwright, and intellectual, added that “among the additional functions of the council is to advise parliament on everything that relates to civil liberties and human rights and to review all laws and regulations and to recommend modifications, so that it complies with international treaties and covenants that govern human rights.”

As for MSF’s accusations, Abu Mazairiq commented that: “I cannot confirm or deny the truth of this, although I could not imagine that of any person, especially within the agencies of the transitional government. I think that if this kind of torture happened, it would have happened at the hands of one of the groups who are considered rebels and are hunting for individuals loyal to Gaddafi who participated directly in the fighting. Therefore, if these people are subjected to torture, it is usually before they have reached the security committee or the National Security Agency. During my repeated visits to places of detention, none of the detainees ever complained of mistreatment or torture.”

In terms of human rights after the revolution, the deputy chair of the national council said: “We in Libya are living through exceptional circumstances. The government has not extended its control entirely, and its agencies are still weak. There is a major role for the rebels in maintaining order. But that does not prevent the existence of a range of abuses which stem from the absence of a culture of human rights in Libya for 42 years under Gaddafi’s rule.”

However, he stressed that “the government must be tough on its members in the event that any of them violate human rights, which means what happened in Misrata is a matter that cannot be ignored. We must confirm the reasons which led MSF to stop working in Misrata and it is a matter that I will follow through on personally to find out the truth behind it.”

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

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12th Herzliya Conference Addresses Challenge of Iran, Syria, Resistance “Arabs” Participate

By Abdul Nasser Fakih

“The Herzliya Conference”, hosted by “the Interdisciplinary Center” at Herzliya in occupied Palestine; also one of the “Israeli” strategic security conferences and one aiming at assisting the enemy’s entity to determine the present security risks and the means to face them, is being held on the 30th of January through the 2nd of February in occupied Palestine, where a big number of economic, military, and political Zionist leaders are participating, as well as international, influential figures including European presidents and prime ministers and senior officers of international institutions and organizations. Yet, it is significant that some Arabs from Qatar, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are taking part in “the Herzliya Conference” and in normalization, therefore. This complies with a previous declaration by “the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)” concerning “an Iranian threat”, which has matched with Zionist calls for the alliance of Arabs and “Israel” in confrontation with “an Iranian threat for both”.

“Tahsine al-Halabi”, a Palestinian political writer and “Israeli”-affairs researcher residing in Damascus, has spoken to “al-Intiqad” Website, confirming that “the major concern of “the Herzliya Conference” is confronting the axis of the resistance, whose power and withstanding are increasing upon its steadfastness.” As well, al-Halabi points out, “The kind of Arab participation in the Conference is significant as it reveals the appearance of a new axis in alliance with “Israel” involving Doha, Oman, and Ramallah.” The Palestinian writer also sees that “among the central topics of the Conference are: first, the effect of the economic financial crisis on “Israel”; second, “Israel’s” current strategic asset with respect to the United States and the question on the continuity of the Zionist entity’s protection for the US interests in the Middle East; third, Tel Aviv’s and Washington DC’s security, military, and political conflict with Tehran; fourth, the influence of the current evolutions, evoked by the so-called “Arab Spring” (“the Arab Awakening”), on the resistance movements (Hizbullah and Hamas).”

Al-Halabi considers that “the most significant urgency the Conference deals with this year is the means to handle the Arab evolution and the prospect on the Iranian matter.” Then he talks about “an “Israeli”-US-European agenda, with which some Arab regimes familiarize in confrontation with Tehran.” Al-Halabi warns that “the Conference aims at preparing the Arab wisdom to accept this familiarization.” Besides, al-Halabi clarifies that “the participants’ proposals and debates in the Conference are to recommend working for the promotion of a media plan executed by numerous Arab-speaking media.” Al-Halabi points out that “this plan aims at addressing the public consciousness to view Iran as “the major enemy” and to promote a sectarian incitement; these are excellently two “Israeli” requests.”

Now al-Halabi explains, “The Conference is handling the ways “Israel” can benefit from the Arab evolutions and diminish the consequent harms these evolutions inflect on the Zionist entity.” Though al-Halabi says, “The Arab participants’ role serves to promote the principle of “non-opposition” of the so-called “Arab Spring” and “peace” with the Zionist-Occupation entity,” he notices “the apparent weakness in representing the countries of the uprisings, except Egypt, from which a participant is presented as an international character; that is, none of the Arab-uprisings countries dares normalize with the “Israeli” enemy in such circumstances.” Al-Halabi denounces “the representation for Qatar by one of the figures when no direct normalization agreement with the Occupation entity exists; this actually signifies the presence of secret “Israeli”-(Arab) Gulf affairs.”

In comparison, al-Halabi sees that Turkey “has taken no part in the Conference so as to guard its prestige and evade the accusation of participation in plotting against Syria.” Al-Halabi considers that the participation of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority “is no more than a mere ornament for the Conference, and this makes “Israel” seem as it were adherent to “peace” and as if it were sustaining the negotiations with Palestine.”

Now the Palestinian writer talks about the European participation in “the Herzliya Conference”, revealing that “the purpose beyond this participation is the “Israeli” cooperation with the European governments to counter the activity of some non-governmental organizations in “the old continent”, which are working for depriving the “legal and ethical legitimacy” of the Zionist entity.” He adds, “The means to develop the European-“Israeli” relations are being debated in consequence with the recent political conflict between Europe and “Israel”.”

Thereon, al-Halabi reveals that “the Turkish State has displayed a documentary film on the so-called “Jewish Holocaust” in parallel with the commemoration of “the International Remembrance Holocaust Day”, which the United Nations held in the UN Headquarters in New York last Friday, the 27th of January.” The Palestinian writer refers this act to “Ankara’s will to lessen the pressure on it, which the Zionist Lobby has been creating through Paris consequently after the French Congress ratified a law that incriminated the denial of the occurrence of “the Armenian Genocide” (“the Armenian Holocaust”) in time of the Ottoman Reign”, pointing out that “this has been the first time for an Islamic state to display such film, and this hasn’t evoked public agitation in Turkey since the public realizes that its government is suffering European pressure concerning the issue of “the Armenian Genocide“.” Al-Halabi concludes that this pressure is one of the outcomes of the “Israeli”-European cooperation, for which preparations have been made in common conferences held earlier, including “the Herzliya Conference”.”

Here are epitomes of the Arabs declared as participants in “the Herzliya Conference”:

1. Prince al-Hassan Bin Talal: the Regent of Jordan since 1965 until his discharge on the 25th of January, 1999, and the youngest son of King Talal and Queen Zein ash-Sharaf. Western institutes describe him as “an outstanding Arab economist and intellect” as he is actively involved in international forums and conferences for economy and intellect, which twin with the Western ideology. He is making a direct speech via video-link in the opening of “the Herzliya Conference”.

2. Dr. Saeb Erekat: Chief Palestinian Negotiator for “the Process of Settlement” with the Zionist entity since 1996 and senior member of the Palestinian-“Israeli” negotiations, which accomplished “the Oslo Accords” in 1993. On the 12th of February, 2011, he made his resignation to the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas after “the Process of Settlement” had reached a dead end. Seldom has Erekat missed membership in the negotiations of Palestinian delegations with the representatives of the “Israeli” Occupation. In the Conference he is addressing the recent developments of the Palestinian-“Israeli” relations entitled:
“NO PEACE, NO PROCESS: “ISRAEL”-PALESTINIAN RELATIONSHIPS”

3. Riad el-Khouri: Jordanian economist “specialized” in Middle East and Africa affairs; previously participated in “the Herzliya Conference”; a former member of “the Carnegie Middle East Center”; a professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese-American University (LAU); consultant for the European Commission, the World Bank, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the US Aid Program (USAID); member of the International Council of “Questscope” in Amman, Jordan, a British organization involved in “changing and merging” communities. El-Khouri is lecturing on these topics:
“SHORT-TERM SCENARIOS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST”
“THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST: ARAB SPRING OR ISLAMIST WINTER?”

4. Salman Sheikh: a Qatari researcher; Director of “the Brookings Doha Center” and Fellow at the corresponding “Saban Center for Middle East Policy”. Sheikh’s researches involve “settlement” issues and “solutions” for the Middle East struggle. Among his researches is “A Chance for Hamas to Seek Friends outside Damascus”. He has held several earlier positions, including: the Personal Representative of the Secretary General for Lebanon; the UN the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the Middle East; the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East “Peace Process”; and “the Director for Policy and Research at the office of Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser el-Missned”. Currently he is the Special Representative to the European “Muslim West Facts Project”; he is also “the Counselor of Oxford Research Group for Middle East Affairs”. Sheikh is lecturing on:
“THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST: ARAB SPRING OR ISLMAIST WINTER?”

5. Tony Badran: Lebanese-American Research Fellow at “the Foundation for Defense of Democracies” (FDD) in Washington DC, which is sponsored by the “Israeli” Lobby and the Neo-Conservatives of the US; whereby he is specialized in the Lebanese and Syrian political affairs. He is known for his extremism and discrimination against Arabs; yet, he is in contact with the Lebanese “Future Party” (of “the March 14 Alliance”) and has been considered to be “the foreign secretary of the Future Party” for many US lobbies. Previously he joined “the Lebanese Forces”, and he has actually acknowledged this when interviewed by several US media, including “Fox News”; whereby he bragged about taking part in the perpetration of “the Sabra and Shatila Massacre” against the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (in 1982). Actually, even some “Israeli” associations refrain from inviting him to their conferences as he has called for killing Muslims – even American Muslims. Badran is lecturing on:
“POST ASSAD: WHAT NEXT FOR SYRIA AND LEBANON?”

6. Sherif el-Diwany: an Egyptian economist and Director of “al-Marsad Incorporation”. He has held the position of the Director of “the Middle East and North Africa for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos”, the policies of which are quite known. Though el-Diwany has no publicity or post in Egypt, he’s going to lecture on:

“THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF POWER: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, EGYPT, AND TURKEY IN THE MIDDLE EAST”

“MIDDLE EAST 2020: SCENARIOS FOR THE COMING DECADE”.

7. Advocate Basha’er Fahoum Jayoussi: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948, one of the founders and the Chairwoman of “the Jewish-Arab Center” at the University of Haifa, which concentrates on “merging Arabs with the “Israeli” community” and establishing “common actualities” between Jewish and Arab students; whereby the Center offers awards and scholarships to students doing researches on the issue of “common Arab-Jewish livelihood”, as well as to students reinforcing this “common livelihood” in appreciation for their “social activity”. Most of Jayoussi’s activities focus on the normalization between Palestine and “Israel”. She is lecturing on:
“GOVERNING “ISRAEL’S” ECONOMY: SOCIAL JUSTICE VS CAPITALISM”

8. Nahed Khazem: Mayor of the Shafa Amr (Shfaram) Municipality in the Western al-Jalil (Galilee) in the north of occupied Palestine; is well known for his cooperation and good terms with the Zionist-government ministers, particularly with the Culture Minister Gideon Saer. Khazem also participates in merging Arabs with “the “Israeli” community” in the Galilee Region. He is lecturing on:

“GALILEE: SETTING PRIORITIES FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT”

Here are epitomes of the prominent Arab attendees of “the Herzliya Conference”:

1. Muhammad Darawshe: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; Fellow Member at “the Abraham Fund”, an “Israeli” foundation; has held the position of the Foreign Affairs Director of “the Abraham Fund Initiatives” since 1996, of which he and Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu have been the Co-Executive Directors since 2004. The foundation actually aims at eliminating the Arab presence in occupied Palestine; claiming the conduct of a “Merging and Equality Policy” targeting the Jews and Arabs in occupied Palestine. For more than twenty years, Darawshe has been significantly involved in the field of “Jewish-Arab co-existence”.

2. Masad Barhoum: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; the M.D. Director General of “the Nahariya Governmental Hospital” in Western al-Jalil (Galilee). Barhoum is known for his activity and cooperation with the “Histadrut” (“the “Israeli” General Federation of Laborers”), as well as his outstanding relations with the consecutive governments of the Zionist entity, particularly with the Zionist health ministers.

3. Ayman Seif: the Director of “the Center for the Development of the Arab Minority” at the office of the Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 1996 through 2008, he was in charge of “the “Israeli” Financial Committee” of the Prime Ministry, an economist at the Economy and Planning Ministry, and a member of “the Governmental Committee” in charge of securing the backgrounds of Arabs, claiming “Convenient Representation of Arab Scholars at Governmental Centers” as a policy; also a member of “the Special Committee for Promoting Work Opportunities and Initiatives in the Arab Mainstream”. 

4. Dr. Khaled Abu Asbah: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; the Director of “the Massar Institute for Research, Planning, and Educational Counseling”; a Sociology-Department Lecturer at the Zionist “Beit Berl Academic College” in “the Third Sector” in occupied Palestine. He received his Sociology and Anthropology PhD from “the Bar Ilan University” in occupied Palestine. His dissertation addressed “Family and School Perceptions: Indicators for Arab-“Israeli” Students’ Involvement in Violence”. Abu Asbah is a pioneer as to merging Palestinians with the Zionist entity; whereby he is in charge of “the Strategy for the Advancement of Arab-“Israeli” Citizens in “Israel””, a project regarding which he has made studies at “the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute”.  

 

Source: Al Intiqad Online Newspaper, Translated and Edited by moqawama.org

• Hizbullah Slams Arab Participation in Herzliya: Reflection of Normalization, Commitment to “Israel’s” Security

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  

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If a country wants…….

FAD

made in Syria !!
( even under the ” dictatorship “ )

If a country has already an atom bomb ,

it should not complain about Iran´s .

If a country has not even a parliament
nor any elected-leaders (or head of state)

it should not complain about Syria´s elected-parliament.

If a country has introduced and practised terrorism into Palestine

it should not complain that (some) Palestinians also use it now,

as self-defence.

If a country wants to “save the Jews”
(from any probable anything )

it must take them back to where they came from
or take them into its own .

If any country wants any Peace,

it must start by recalling all its soldiers

back to within its own borders.
If any country wants to put me in a prison
,for what I write or what I say,
it must have its prisons
with ,
Chinese cooks and Swiss–hygiene
Syrian sweet + pastry shop
and
Swedish-prison´s-laws.

Raja Chemayel

Posted byTlaxcalaat9:55 PM

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Iranian nuclear bomb a matter of political will – US Determined on More Sanctions

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1326407570.htmlUS spy chief: Iranian nuclear bomb a matter of political will

Published Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Iran is keeping open its option to develop a nuclear weapon, but US intelligence agencies do not know whether it will eventually decide to build one, the US intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

New US sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear program were likely to have a greater impact than previous ones, but were not expected to lead to the downfall of Tehran’s leadership, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in prepared testimony on the annual worldwide threat assessment for the Senate intelligence committee.

“We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so,” Clapper said.

“We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”
Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment capabilities, which can be used for either civil or weapons purposes, he said.

“Iran’s technical advancement, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthens our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons, making the central issue its political will to do so,” Clapper said.

“These advancements contribute to our judgment that Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, if it so chooses,” he said.

President Barack Obama signed into law December 31 sanctions on Iran’s central bank.

The new US sanctions will have a greater impact on Iran because the Central Bank of Iran handles a large volume of foreign bank transactions and receives the revenue from roughly 70 percent of Iranian oil sold by the National Iranian Oil Company, Clapper said.

“Despite this, Iran’s economic difficulties probably will not jeopardize the regime, absent a sudden and sustained fall in oil prices or a sudden domestic crisis that disrupts oil exports,” he said.

The US has been lobbying Asian countries to cut its imports of Iranian oil with little success so far.
Only Japan and South Korea have hinted at cutting oil imports from Iran, but have also sought waivers from US sanctions to continue purchasing a minimum amount.

China, Iran’s major client, rebutted US calls for it cooperate with its sanctions, while India has said it has no plans to cut Iranian oil imports at this point.

Iran has sought to “exploit the Arab Spring but has reaped limited benefits, thus far,” the testimony said. Its biggest regional concern is Syria where a change in leadership would be a major strategic loss for Tehran.

Clapper’s annual assessment also highlighted the main espionage threats to the United States, most notably China, Russia and Iran.

Russia and China are aggressive and successful in economic espionage against the United States, and “Iran’s intelligence operations against the United States, including cyber capabilities, have dramatically increased in recent years in depth and complexity.”

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ cyber warfare unit hacked into a US spy drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, in December, forcing it to land, almost entirely intact, as it hovered over Iranian airspace.
CIA operations were also dealt a serious and embarrassing blow in Lebanon, with Iran’s powerful ally, Hezbollah, revealing details of its spies in the country last year, including the whereabouts of their meetings.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

IAEA’s Three-day Visit Ends, US Determined on More Sanctions

Local Editor
Officials from the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, were scheduled on Tuesday to wrap up a three-day visit to Iran as US lawmakers signaled they intended to keep up the pressure on the Islamic republic by unveiling plans for yet more economic sanctions, on top of those already infuriating Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said on Monday his country was prepared to host the International Atomic Energy Agency officials for longer, “if they want” to extend their mission. It was not known if the offer was made officially to the IAEA team, whose visit was taking place entirely out of public view.

Tehran’s position, repeated by Salehi, is to call on the European Union and the United States to “replace their policy of sanctions with interaction” with the Islamic republic.
US adamant on sanctions policy

But key US lawmakers on Monday said a senate banking commission would soon vote a text to punish Iran further with more economic and political sanctions. The legislation “sends a clear signal through strong measures that Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons program and its designs for the spread of international terror,” said the top Republican senator on the panel, Richard Shelby.

The bill targets firms that have anything to do with helping Iran mine, produce or transport uranium anywhere in the world. It also requires US-listed companies to disclose if they or their affiliates could have run afoul of US sanctions on Iran by investing in energy investments, or through the sale of communications monitoring or surveillance technology. The bill would additionally deny US visas to Iranian students wanting to study in energy-related fields if it is deemed they plan to return to work in Iran’s energy sector or nuclear program. And it would tighten sanctions on Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including targeting “anyone who materially assists” the Guards.

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Israeli Racism Against Non Jews Especially Africans

by Laura Stuart

Report for the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – submitted January 30, 2012

The State of Israel, which demands that non Jews will recognise it as “The Jewish State” has been involved in the ethnic cleansing of non Jews i.e. Palestine Christian and Muslim Arabs since its creation. Whilst the Israeli Government passes more and more laws which disadvantage non Jews, less well known is the situation of immigrants and asylum seekers from Africa. This video by the African Refugee Development Center is being presented to the United Nations today. The video explains in detail the basis for the racism of Israelis against non Jews.
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Turkish Finesse: "There is no [good] end for this. The end is certain. The question is how painful it will be!"

VIA FLC

The president said authoritarian rulers in the Middle East have two options, which he said are either carry out reforms or face foreign intervention. “If they do not do that and do not bring order to their lands, foreign intervention will be inevitable,” he said.
“Some think that we want war in Syria. Turkey has done everything in its power for a transformation under the leadership of the president. We did everything except beg for it, …We worked so hard [to convince Assad]. We told him that one day you will regret it, one day you will say, ‘I did this and that, but it will be too little, too late, … Syria is unfortunately on a path of no return. The important thing is that this process is not dragged out. There is no [good] end for this. The end is certain. The question is how painful it will be,” the president also said…
The president was also asked about the comments that the region has been dominated by Iran during the interview. He played down an alleged Turkey-Iran rivalry in the Middle East…”

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 9:03 AM

 

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Israel’’, Settlements and’’ Democracy

ROBERT FANTINA As “Israel” continues to defy international law, including countless United Nations resolutions, and builds more and more settlement on land stolen from the Palestinians, its reputation as a model democracy is taking a well-deserved beating. Last year, “Israel” took a dramatic step in violating whatever semblance of democracy it ever had. On July 11, 2011, the New York Times reported this: “The “Israeli” Parliament on Monday passed contentious legislation that effectively bans any public call for a boycott against the state of “Israel” or its West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense.” While opponents say that this law compromises the freedom of expression, its supporters, ironically, say that it is necessary to fight the ‘global de-legitimization of “Israel”. Shortly prior to the passage of this law, “Israelis” successfully brought down the price of cheese, by boycotting that industry. One wonders why the price of cheese is seen as a legitimate purpose for a boycott, but human rights is not. There are a number of global initiatives to boycott “Israel”, and apparently they are all legal, except for any such efforts in Israel itself. The obvious question, ‘What does “Israel” have to be afraid of,’ is too easily answered to even be asked. But does the further eroding of democracy, such as it is, in “Israel”, really matter? Not so, according to the words of wisdom from one Benny Katzover, described as a ‘veteran settler,’ having joined the first group of occupiers in the northern West Bank nearly forty years ago. Mr. Katzover makes no bones about “Israel’s” purpose. In a recent interview he said: “We didn’t come here to establish a democratic state, we came here to return the Jewish people to their land.” He continued: “Across the country, these ideas, that democracy needs dramatic change, if not dismantling then at least dramatic change, these ideas are very widespread.” How “Israel” can be seen as a democracy when it has occupied another nation and oppressed its people for decades, after a policy of radical ethnic cleansing followed by one of gradual ethnic cleansing, is a mystery that only members of the US Congress, who have been bought and paid for by the American “Israeli” Political Affairs Committee, can answer. When settlers, residing in homes that violate international law, can, with impunity, burn mosques, destroy orchards and burn cars, the concept of democracy is a distant one indeed. But Mr. Katzover has pulled the veil back from the eyes of those not blinded by AIPAC dollars. A secure, democratic “Israel” is not now, and never has been, the goal. Returning the Jewish people to land that they have determined is rightfully theirs, regardless of the centuries during which another people has populated that land, is, and always has been, the goal. Depriving Palestinian farmers of their livelihood by destroying their orchards, or establishing such convoluted roadblocks that a 10-minute walk ‘as the crow flies’ turns into an hours-long ordeal; preventing students from going to school by the same means; forbidding the injured and ill from obtaining medical services, do not promote national security, or demonstrate democratic principles. They are, simply, racist practices of an oppressive, imperial government dead set on the ethnic cleansing of the land they illegally occupy.  And what, one may reasonably ask, does that shining star, the world’s foremost beacon of peace and freedom (at least according to its own cheerleaders), have to say about this? What does the illustrious United States of American, the so-called land of the free and the home of the brave, say about the repression of the Palestinian people, and the continual murders of these truly brave people? Well, basically, not much. Without a powerful lobby, really, why should Congress or the President pay much attention? Can the Palestinian people pay for the votes of members of the U.S. Congress? Can they wield sufficient electoral influence to terrify the men and women who walk those hallowed halls? Do those members of Congress salivate to bow before some Palestinian lobby, as they do before AIPAC? Well, until these conditions are met, “Israel’s” constant, inhuman, shocking violations of the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people will be ignored by the US government. Human rights, we must remember, are for the wealthy and influential. Once again, so-called negotiations, this time at a very low level, have broken down. “Israel” claims it wants to ‘negotiate’ with no pre-conditions, and the Palestinians want an end to new, illegal settlement activity before they will return to the negotiating table. It’s all pointless. “Israel” has always wanted all of Palestine, and has succeeded in seizing most of it in the last 60-plus years. “Israel” has one of the most powerful military machines in the world, and is sponsored by the most powerful government in the world. Why negotiate with a nation it has turned into a third world country? What do the Palestinians have that “Israel” cannot simply take? When was ‘compromise’ ever wanted, if, as Mr. Katzover says, providing all the land of Palestine for the nation of “Israel” has always been the goal?  Any sense of fairness compels one to recognize the need for “Israel” to surrender this stolen land, so it can be returned to its rightful owners, people whose families have owned it for generations, not people who believe themselves promised it in the Bible. But, one might ask, should the over half a million illegal settlers who now make their home in Palestine really be forced to leave? Wouldn’t that be a gross injustice? The answers to these two questions, this writer can categorically say, are yes, they should be forced to leave, and no, it wouldn’t be an injustice of any kind. One does not have to look far to see a precedent. In the time span of 1947 to 1948, more than half of Palestine’s native population, nearly 800,000 people, were uprooted, many of them killed, and over 500 villages were entirely destroyed. If “Israel” could cause that atrocity to occur, certainly the orderly, planned removal of half a million “Israelis” who are illegally occupying the land can and should be accomplished, with no concern about injustice.  The U.S. has proven to be a stumbling block to the rights of the Palestinian people to live in peace, dignity and freedom. President Mahmoud Abbas is right to petition the United Nations for recognition as a member state. It can only be hoped that that request is soon acted upon, so the suffering Palestinian people can begin to see a glimmer of hope for a free and independent nation. Source: Counter Punch

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Call me a Palestinian from Palestine

Posted on 26/01/2012

by reham alhelsi

Interview with Laila Khaled

Don’t call me homeless, because I have a home thousands of years old.

I have a home in Jrash which you demolished, erased from your map.

I have a home whose stones still stand as witness to your crimes, still stand witness to what once was and to what will be.

I have a home that will be rebuilt with the same stones and on the same spot where it originally was and where it should be.

I have a home in Jerusalem which you occupy, a home that will be liberated.

“My home is in Zakariya”.

I have a home in Hebron which you closed, a home that will be reopened. I have a home in Gaza which you bombed, a home that will be rebuilt.

Palestinian home in Saffuriyya

I have a home carved in my heart. I have a home in An-Naqab, I have a home in Tabaria, I have a home in Bisan, I have a home in Jenin, I have a home in Jerusalem, I have a home in Safad.
Every part of Palestine is my home; every olive field is my sitting room, every hilltop is my balcony, every meadow is my playground, every stone is my chair, every bit of shadow beneath a fig tree is my bed. The land of Palestine is my ground, the sky over Palestine is my roof. All of Palestine is my home, my one and only home.

Don’t call me homeless, because I have a home and it’s called Palestine.
Don’t call me voiceless, because I have a voice even if you don’t want to listen.

I have a voice that roars in the midst of the storm. I have a voice that breaks the silence of those who sing non-stop of humanity, of human rights to every other people and every other nation, but are blind, deaf and mute to the Zionist crimes. I have a voice that silences the lies, silences the hasbara. I have a voice that sings of freedom, of liberation and of return. I have a voice that is louder than the whips of oppression, louder than the bullets of the occupation.

My voice is my heart that beats every second to write in blood the name of my beloved Palestine. My voice is my eyes that see Palestine as it will always be; one from the river to the sea. My voice is my body that stands steadfast, only armed with a belief in a just cause, to face your bulldozer, your bombs, your tanks and your war planes. My voice is my hand that plants the lands you so savagely murder, that waters the olive and the fig tree that you so mercilessly massacre. My voice is my fingers that draw Palestine free of occupation and colonization.

My voice is the children who cherish the keys to their homes,

My voice is the children who memorize the names of the villages you erased, and write these names in their hearts, in their copybooks and on their maps. My voice is the children who cherish the keys to their homes, hold on to them, dream of the homes that are theirs, the homes that once stood under the blue sky of Palestine, and wait for the day to return and rebuild them. My voice is the children who count the number of trees you uproot, and replant a thousand tree for every tree you kill.

Palestinian youths fly kites in Jerusalem by Damascus Gate.

My voice are the children who wake up to the sound of your planes, go to school despite your tanks, play in the alley of Palestine despite your bombs, fly kites despite your F-16, face your machine gun with their slingshot. My voice is the children who continue to dream of freedom and return every day despite your terror, despite your killing machines. My voice is the parent who plants the love of Palestine in the hearts of children. My voice is the youth who raises the flag of Palestine in the face of oppression. My voice is the elderly who passes the heritage of Palestine to the future generations. My voice is the farmer who draws Palestine in every field, on every hilltop, on every flower and on every leaf. My home is the teacher who teachers the children a song about Palestine. My voice is the refugee who swears to return to Palestine.

Don’t call me voiceless, because every cell of me screams: Palestine.
Don’t call me a terrorist, because you are the one terrorizing my family and my homeland.

“a good Arab is a dead Arab”.

You occupy our home, colonize it with aliens and expel us from our birthplace. You kill our children while sitting in their classrooms, you kill our parents while on their way to work, you kill our friends while waiting at checkpoints. You bomb our schools during the day while we are at our desks, you bomb our homes at night while we are asleep, you bomb our streets while we play, you bomb our fields while we pick the olives, you bomb our ambulances while they rush us to hospital. You kidnap our siblings from their beds, from their schools and from their workplace, you torture our comrades and imprison them in dark cold dungeons. You demolish our homes over our heads, uproot our trees and destroy our fields to build colonies and roads for aliens who don’t speak the language of the land. You steal our drinking water, you starve our children and our olive trees to fill your swimming pools and to water you European exported flowers and trees. You walk our roads armed from head to toe, you burn our mosques and besiege our churches, you teach your children that “a good Arab is a dead Arab”. You steal our homeland, steal our homes and fields, steal our heritage. You massacre our songs, our tales, our laughter, our books and our dances. You attack us with phosphorous bombs and F-16 and markavas. You shoot our pregnant mothers, our baby brothers, our children. You threaten our existence every day, every minute, every second.

“Palestinians are an Invented People”

• Don’t call me a terrorist because it is you who is the personification of terrorism.
• Don’t call me invented, because my roots in this land are as old as the land itself.

I am part of the land and the land is part of me. My blood and sweat have since the dawn of history watered this land, kept it green and blooming and gave the poppies their colour. I have a history in this land that is older than the history of your invented entity and older than the history of the colonial powers that support you. It is my homeland you stole in order to create an invented homeland for yourself.

Israeli best seller breaks national taboo “Idea of a Jewish people invented, says historian”

It is my cultural heritage you stole in order to create an invented identity for yourself. It is my history you twisted in order to create an invented history for yourself. It is my homes, my villages, my playgrounds you erased in order to create an invented home for yourself. It is my groves, my fields, my flowers you stole in order to invent for yourself a link to this land. It is my olive tree you uprooted and replanted in your colonies in order to invent a place for yourself in this land. You stole my land, you stole my home, you stole my field, you stole my Hannoun, you stole my olive tree. You stole my Yaffa, you stole my Haifa, you stole my Beisan, you stole my Ramlah, you stole my Tabaria, you stole my Tarshiha, you stole my Jrash. You stole my Dabkah, you stole my Dal’ouna, you stole my Thoub, you stole my food. You stole my books, you stole my history, you stole my tales, you stole my songs. You stole my identity and you call me invented? It is you who is invented, living in an invented entity, creating for yourself an invented identity.

Ana min Falasteen.

• Don’t call me invented because Palestine is as old as time itself and “Israel” is the invented entity.
• Don’t call me Israeli Arab, because there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab.

I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Yaffa. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Acca. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Beisan. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian An-Naqab. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Al-Jalil. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Beir As-Sabi’. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian An-Nasirah. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Al-Quds. This land has my features imprinted in every stone, every tree, every cloud, every flower and every creek.

You can force me to speak your language, but the land I walk on, the sky above me, the wind and the rain and the rainbow whisper my name: Palestinian. You can force me to write my name in your alphabet, but engraved in the rocks, drawn in the sky, printed in the leaves of trees is one word in Arab: Palestinian. You can force me to carry the ID card of your entity, but the blood that runs in my veins screams I am from Palestine, Ana min Falasteen. You can force my tongue to sing your invented anthem, but my heart will always sing Palestine. You can force my hand to write “Israel” on the map, but my eyes will only see Palestine. You can force me to study the invented history of your entity, but my mind will repeat the massacres you committed, the villages you erased, the on-going Nakba you are causing.

Uri Avnery born: September 10, 1923, Beckum, Germany immigration to Palestine: November 1933 member of the Irgun, 1938-1942

You come from the USA and you claim a right to my homeland. You come from Germany and you illegalize my existence, my heritage and my history in this land. You come from France and you lock me up in ghettos in my own homeland. You come from Russia and you silence my mosques and my churches. You come from Ukraine and you deny me my birthright and my rights. But listen, and listen carefully: I am a Palestinian from Palestine, this is my home and I am here to stay till the end of days.

• Don’t call me Israeli Arab, because I am a Palestinian from Palestine.
• Don’t call me a Palestinian of the Palestinian Territories because it is called Palestine. 

Don’t give me a fraction of my homeland and call it a solution. Don’t give me oppression and call it peace. Don’t give me a Bantustan and call it a home. Don’t give me a prison and call it freedom. Don’t draw the borders of my existence according to your whims and interests and call it a state. My home is not a disfigured result of a till-death-do-us-part-marriage between the occupier and the champions of negotiators-for-life that yields a Bantustan on 20% of my homeland.
My home is not a “lets legitimize the Zionist racist colonization of Palestine and hope they accept us and allow us to live with them one day” tale for the sake of fame and a shoulder pat from “conditional-supporters”, while giving the Zionist usurpers a right to my land which they stole and continue to colonize… a right to my home which they destroyed and continue to destroy…. a right to my village which they ethnically cleansed and continue to do so to the rest of Palestine… a right to Palestine, the Palestine they raped and continue to rape for over 63 years, a rape they are proud of and celebrate very year while denying us even the tears and the memories and the names of the victims they massacred and the villages they erased.
My Palestine is the home that is mine since the dawn of history till the end of history. My Palestine is the home of my ancestors, the home between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. 

• Don’t call me a Palestinian of the Palestinian Territories, because I am a Palestinian from Palestine.
• Don’t call me a dreamer, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.
• Don’t call me unrealistic, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.
• Don’t call me crazy, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.

I know that one day, Zionism will be defeated. I know that one day, occupation will be history. I know that one day, justice will prevail. I know that one day, the sun will shine again over Palestinian famers working in Marj Ibin Amer. I know that one day, the sea will hear the whispers of Palestinian fishermen watching the sunset over Acca. I know that one day, the gentle breeze will race the laughter of Palestinian children along the streets of the old city of Jerusalem. I know that one day, Palestinian refugees will return to build their villages and their homes. I know that one day, Palestine will be free of the Zionist colonists, the cowards and racists that they are, for they don’t know justice, they don’t want justice, they fear justice and thus they have no place in this land.

Those who destroy the land, will never be part of the land. Those for whom the land is the parent, the sibling, the child, the friend and the entire existence will always be part of the land.

• Don’t act as if I don’t exist because I am here, and here I will stay, forever.
• Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because there is only one home for me; Palestine.
• Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because there is only one Palestine; from the River to the Sea.
• Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because that is what I am: a Palestinian from Palestine. 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Is Israel on the road to self-destruction?

Again and again Mr. Alan Hart is repeating the song (Blackmail): His friend “Mother Israel” told him:  “In a doomsday situation,” she said, “Israel would be prepared to take the region down with it.”

Is Israel on the road to self-destruction? Alan asked, though he knows the answer.

Israel is in a doomsday situastion, and Alan’s “nightmare” may come true.

To prevent Israel from destroying itself and taking the world with it, he involved him self in the what he called “Peace conspiracy” and served as a linkman between Arafat “Father Palestine” and Perez. Oslo is the bastard child of his peace conspiracy. After two decades Alan is still woried

On september, 2010, Mr. hart called the Saudi King to follow the advise of Thomas L. Friedman: “King Abdullah should invite Mr. Netanyahu to Riyadh and present it to him personally.”
He called Fatah-Hamas to declare in the most explicit terms, “we are a pragmatic people and we hereby declare that we are prepared to recognise and live in permanent peace with the reality of an Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with Jerusalem an open, undivided city and the capital of two states… We further declare that our pragmatism extends to accepting that the right of the dispossessed Palestinians to return must and will be confined to the Palestinian state, which means that many of those who wish to return will have to settle for compensation for the loss of their homes and their land.” 

“Is there any power on Planet Earth that could assist Israeli Jews to save themselves from themselves – perhaps I should say save themselves from their deluded leaders?” He asked..
The more He think about this question, the more he is convinced that “there is only one power that could do it – the Jews of the world.”

SO PALESTINIANS SHOULD WAIT TILL JUDGEMENT DAY.

Who is trying to bluff the Palestinians?

by Alan Hart

One very well informed and courageous Israeli who thinks the answer is ‘Yes’ is Merav Michaeli, a radio and television presenter who also writes for Ha’aretz. She is completely without fear when it comes to telling it like it is. On 2 January this year, for example, she wrote:

The Israeli government doesn’t want peace. There’s nothing new in that. It has been the proven way since the establishment of the state.”

The headline over her latest article is Israel’s never-ending Holocaust. One of her main points is that Israel has never confronted the trauma of the Nazi holocaust and has

turned it into a placard in the service of the national trauma, to reinforce the constant existential fear and the aggressiveness that comes with it.”

Because what she wrote is so important, and in my view ought to be read by all peoples of all faiths everywhere who want to understand why the Zionist state is what it is, I am going to quote her at some length.

She wrote:

The Holocaust is the primary way Israel defines itself. And that definition is narrow and ailing in the extreme, because the Holocaust is remembered only in a very specific way, as are its lessons. It has long been used to justify the existence and the necessity of the state, and has been mentioned in the same breath as proof that the state is under a never-ending existential threat.
The Holocaust is the sole prism through which our leadership, followed by society at large, examines every situation. This prism distorts reality and leads inexorably to a forgone conclusion… that all our lives are simply one long Shoah (experience of persecution and extermination – my amplification not Merav’s).
The ‘Hitlers’ are always there: Just a week ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said for the nth time that there is no shortage of those who want to exterminate us completely. In other words, there is no lack of reasons to continue to reinforce the fear of the Holocaust – which, according to his father, historian Benzion Netanyahu, has never ended.
So it is that we don’t have any rivals, adversaries or even enemies. Only Hitlers. This is how the Holocaust is taught in school, this how it is that Israeli students are taken to visit death camps – and how it came to be that, as Ha’aretz reported on Friday, just 2 percent of Israeli youth feel committed to democratic principles after studying the Holocaust… That’s the way it is with traumas. Because of our human limitations, a trauma that is not dealt with makes us constantly see yet another trauma approaching – even when whatever is coming has no connection to the previous trauma and may even be a good thing. Trauma leads to belligerence and a strong tendency to wreak havoc on one’s surroundings, but first and foremost on oneself.
What we consider rational is actually a frightened, defensive, aggressive pattern. Our current leaders have made Israeli Judaism just a post-traumatic syndrome, while they lead us to self-destruction.

I imagine that most if not all Arabs and other Muslims everywhere would welcome the prospect of Israel self-destructing, but in my Gentile view it is not actually a prospect to be welcomed. Why not?
If there comes a time when it seemed to them that the Zionist state’s self-destruction was imminent, Israel’s leaders would respond in the same way as they would if their state was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield. As readers of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews know, that response was put into words by Golda Meir in the course of one of my BBC Panorama interviews with her when she was prime minister. In a doomsday situation, she said, Israel

would be prepared to take the region down with it.”

The question arising is something like this. Is there any power on Planet Earth that could assist Israeli Jews to save themselves from themselves – perhaps I should say save themselves from their deluded leaders?

The more I think about this question, the more I am convinced that there is only one power that could do it – the Jews of the world. But that must be the subject of another post and I will welcome thoughts from others before I write it.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

deLiberation – the future of journalism

Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 1:17PM Gilad Atzmon

Greetings citizens of the World,

This is message regarding our online news website deLiberation, only a 3 weeks old but growing fast.

deLiberation are thinkers, writers, artists and activists, each committed to freedom of thought and to telling the stories that the mainstream media is there to conceal.

At deLiberation we hope for a better future – a Western ‘spring’. Unlike other journals committed to power, hegemony and mammon, deLIBERATION is committed to

1. Truth,
2. Justice &
3. Peace.

Come visit us at deLiberation. If you would like to help us, you can by putting in a link from your website/facebook/blog to deLiberation, help us spread the word, :)) … of TJP, Truth – Justice – Peace.

deLiberation :- the future of journalism

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Higlights this week on deLiberation

Glad not to be ….. in the PSC

Dr. Elias Akleh is a Palestinian. In 1948 and again in 1967 his family were displaced, and like millions of other Palestinians, he now finds himself living outside of his homeland. It is perhaps fortunate that he did not move to the UK and join the…

How to watch Press TV in the UK

Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster’s English-language outlet, has been forced off the air in the UK after Ofcom revoked its licence for ‘breaching the Communications Act.’ Though the British Government sends young soldiers to kill in the name of freedom, in the United Kingdom….

Stop Britain’s pro-Israel lobby

The Queen needs a new royal yacht. But the British government says it can’t afford to buy her one. The GBP 80 million for the project must come from private sources. “Leading British companies will … be asked to donate funds in exchange for naming rights to…

PSC, Racism and ‘The Two-State Solution’.

Things can only get worse for the PSC. So far, the PSC leadership has faced just the thin end of a derailment campaign which is sure to intensify now they have shown such willingness to bow to Jewish power tactics. Now that PSC has started to censor…

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We are Nabi Saleh – Trailer

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1326407570.htmlby Jonathon Blakeley
Thanks to Jonathan Azaziah for this

an insight into real life in occupied Palestine ~ JB

…The trailer of the documentary We are Nabi Saleh!

We are Nabi Saleh is still looking for Co-funding, screening places and help with translation: Arabic-English. If you wan’t to collaborate, write an email to jan.beddegenoodts@hotmail.com. We can make it real together. Bless.

 

Posted by Jonathon Blakeley on January 30, 2012. Filed under Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry                

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The Jewish National Fund – “Greenwashing”

by Laura Stuart

On December 21st 2011 the Israeli government demolished the village of Al Araqib for the 33rd time. The inhabitants of Al Araqib are Palestinian Bedouin Arabs who now hold Israeli citizenship. A film was recently made about the Beduoin of Al Araqib called “Sumoud” meaning steadfastness which is exactly what these amazing people are showing as they refuse to be removed from their land.

The people of al Araqib are resisting hard as they insist to stay on their land in the most difficult of conditions. Not only have they had their homes regularly demolished since 2010 but they have to live in the heat and cold of the desert without mains water and electricity. These previously nomadic people of Al Naqab desert used to graze their livestock over a huge area but since the formation of the State of Israel the land they used to roam has been either appropriated by the State for “security purposes” or bought up by “charities” such as the Jewish National Fund who have a policy of only marketing land to Jews. The J.N.F. is supposedly working to make the desert bloom but evidently they are engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their land, not just in Al Naqab but in other areas as well, I suspect this was the reason that David Cameron had to resign as a patron from the British J.N.F. last year.

The Jewish National Fund is campaigning on “Green Sunday”, February 5th 2012 by asking people to buy a tree to plant in Israel. I advise all those people who are for Human Rights and against Ethnic Cleansing to spread the word far and wide about this “Greenwashing” and to be active in promoting the truth about what the Jewish National Fund really stands for.

More information on how to help can be found on the website of the “Stop the Jewish National Fund Campaign http://www.stopthejnf.org/actionalerts_5feb2012.html
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Anti-Zionism in the 21st Century

By Tariq Shadid

The struggle of the Palestinians is a struggle against Zionism.

The essence of the Palestinian struggle is the battle against Zionism. It is a battle against its racism, against its murderous war crimes, against its insatiable territorial hunger, against its disdain for non-Jewish human rights, and against its devoted attempts to destroy Palestinian national identity. As voices of normalization are on the rise, and social media is invaded by paid pro-Zionist bloggers, there is an increased need for anti-Zionists to draw attention to the crimes committed by ‘Israel’, and to speak up against the ongoing media silence and the apologist activities of those misleadingly portraying themselves as ‘peace doves’. Let us first look briefly at the history of the anti-Zionist struggle, and then see where we stand today.

The Ideology of Zionism

Years before the creation of the state of ‘Israel’, there was already a full-blown battle going on against Zionism. On one side, the Palestinians were resisting against the usurpation of their land, having grown aware of the far-stretching implications of the Balfour declaration of 1917, which laid the foundation for the mass-immigration of European Jews into Palestine. In those same decades, there was also an ongoing struggle within the Jewish communities in Europe, where many were opposed to the tenets of Zionism either on a religious basis, or on the realization that colonizing an inhabited land would inevitably cause an injustice that would continue to reverberate for many years to come. A famous example of this in that period of time was the famous genius Albert Einstein, who in 1938 already expressed his opposition to the creation of a ‘Jewish state’, and in a letter to the New York Times that he wrote together with a number of prominent Jews in 1948, strongly denounced the horrendous Deir Yassin massacre.

The ongoing struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and the continuing expropriation of their land is well-known, but not everyone is aware that within Jewish ranks, true ideological opposition against Zionism still exists. The most well-known group among these is Neturei Karta (‘Guardians of the City’), an organization of international Jews united against Zionism. On another note, within the current framework of the Zionist state, a coalition of groups that call themselves ‘Campus Watchdogs’ recently went as far as labeling 10 % of Israeli academics as ‘anti-Zionist’. It is likely that this number is highly overrated, since this McCarthyism-like approach can be expected to have lumped together a wide variety of people who expressed criticism at their government’s actions. In a similar way that outside criticism of ‘Israel’ quickly gets labeled as ‘anti-Semitism’, many of the one thousand mentioned academics, publicists and journalists are likely to have received the label of ‘anti-Zionist’ despite adhering to many of Zionism’s principles.

Tribal, Religious, or Ideological?

For some, the ongoing misery is a war between two peoples, basically a ‘tribal war’. Others prefer seeing it as a war between religions, with Judaism on one side and Muslims on the other side. Those who adopt this view are ignoring the pluralistic ethnic and religious composition of the Palestinian people, and are for instance ignoring the fact that many Palestinians are Christians, who have not been spared the gruesome fate of their Muslim compatriots. Thirdly, there are those who view the struggle as a battle between ideologies: Zionism on one side, and anti-Zionism on the other.

As the original PLO manifesto (28 May 1964) stated, the organization declared that “Palestine with its boundaries that existed at the time of the British mandate is an integral regional unit” and that it sought to “prohibit the existence and activity of Zionism”. It also contained statements calling for a right of return and self-determination for the Palestinians. When reading the manifesto, it becomes clear that the PLO, the first more officially organized Palestinian movement against the land theft and expulsion committed by the Zionist terrorist organizations that later declared the Zionist state, was an explicitly anti-Zionist movement. The PLO incorporated the various existing political movements in one body, and was declared to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This was widely accepted by an overwhelming majority of Palestinians.

The Oslo Disaster

As illustrated above, the foundations of the Palestinian struggle were based on the territorial integrity of Palestine (i.e. the one state solution) and the right of return of all expelled Palestinians. These original foundations became embedded in an entire generation of Palestinians worldwide. In 1993, the leadership under Yaser Arafat adopted the two-state solution instead, which largely happened in a top-down manner and led to the Oslo accords, However, it soon became clear to all that the Oslo accords were only accepted by ‘Israel’ as a deceptive method to hypnotize the Palestinians as well as the masses of the world into an illusion of Israeli willingness for territorial concessions, while in truth confiscating huge swathes of land, building a separation wall and almost tripling the settler population (from 250,000 to 700,000). It should be no surprise that even early on, as the scam became blatantly clear to all except seemingly to the leadership of the newly created Palestinian Authority, the original tenets of the struggle were yet again embraced by many Palestinians inside of Palestine as well as in the diaspora.

Return to the Struggle

As the state of confusion created by the Oslo accords lingered on, some defeatist voices however also turned to normalization, instead of returning to the basics of the struggle. It is not to be wondered at that disillusion and opportunism play their role in such a complex situation, wherein many lose hope when faced with the overwhelming military, economical and strategic dominance of the Zionist state. Nevertheless, youth movements that are currently active in keeping the struggle for Palestinian rights alive, predominantly see anti-normalization as one of their main strategic goals. They adhere to the above-mentioned basic tenets of the struggle, and reject the failed formula of negotiations that is still pursued by the Palestinian Authority, despite its lack of popular mandate for it. For most Palestinians it is blatantly clear, that the so-called ‘Peace Process’ has only caused damage to their cause and has not brought even the slightest prospects of a better future, let alone of self-determination or independence.
Internationally, pro-Palestinian activists also largely adhere to the basic tenets of the Palestinian struggle, namely the one-state solution and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. There are other issues as well that are deemed non-negotiable to the majority of Palestinians, such as strong opposition against the Judaization of Jerusalem (Al Quds) which is projected as the future capital of liberated Palestine, and the release of all thousands of Palestinian political prisoners.

There is definitely also a group of ‘two-staters’, but their numbers are dwindling fast, and they rarely engage in activism since their views are largely represented by the Palestinian Authority. The strongest cure for the fallacy of the two-state solution was seeing the Palestinian side of that solution being gobbled up by the Zionist state over the years, faster than one could issue statements of protest against them.

New Shape of the Struggle: Back to Anti-Zionism

It is clear nowadays that the Palestinian Authority is not a useful apparatus for waging any form of struggle, but an administrative body that functions mainly as an extension of the Israeli security apparatus, in a framework inherited directly from the Oslo agreements. This does not mean that the people have stopped struggling. The modern Palestinian struggle has moved towards preferring popular resistance over armed struggle, and employing BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) as a main strategy of generating pressure against the Zionist state. What has also changed, is that this struggle has gained large numbers of international supporters all over the world, who support the Palestinians in their pursuit of freedom from Zionist oppression.

These changes have also brought anti-Zionism back to the forefront, and this has far-reaching implications. Whereas a two-state solution almost automatically implies the undertaking of steps towards normalization, since it implies an acceptance of Zionism and relinquishing the claim of 78 % of Palestinian territory to it, a one-state solution which aims to create a state for all of its inhabitants that does not discriminate on the basis of race of religion, requires a strong and uncompromising return to anti-Zionism as a unifying strategy.

Anti-Zionism versus Normalization

In a struggle that aims to achieve this, normalization is an extremely damaging concession that can never be combined with the dismantling of Zionism, which is the ultimate goal of its strategy. After all, a struggle against racism cannot be successful if the inherently racist tenets of Zionism are accepted. The ‘Oslo-period’ has however sown its sorrowful seeds in more places than may directly become apparent. The vast majority of the Arab masses have not accepted Zionism in their midst, but there are stubborn strands of normalization that seem to be enjoying an increasing momentum within ‘progressive’ ranks of various Arab communities.

Two Egyptian examples can be mentioned in this context. One is Mona Eltahawy, who seems to consider ‘Israel’ to be a civilized state and refused to condemn the genocidal massacre in Gaza that claimed the lives of 1,400 Palestinians (including at least 300 children) by massive attacks from drones, tanks, Apaches and F-16’s – on a population that possesses no bombing shelters or anti-aircraft artillery.

Another even more mind-blowing example is Maikel Nabil, an Egyptian blogger who enjoyed wide campaigns for his release when he was arrested for criticizing the SCAF military junta of post-Mubarak Egypt. He expressed his love for Israel on his blog and in Israeli media with an enthusiasm rarely ever seen before in the Arab world.

There are other examples too, such as Arab-American comedian Ray Hanania of Palestinian origin, who proclaimed himself a candidate for Palestinian presidency in a video that he posted on Youtube, wherein he called for an acceptance of Israeli settlements, and an end to the Right of Return.

The Only Ziocracy in the Middle East

It is true that these examples do not represent the sentiments of the majority of Palestinians and other Arabs, whether in the Arab world or outside of it, but these voices cannot be ignored either. The main reason for this is that voices of normalization like the ones mentioned above often receive disproportionate attention in Western-dominated mass-media, and thereby have a number of insidious destructive effects upon the struggle.

First of all, they make those who are true to the anti-racist struggle against Zionism seem extremist, by offering alternatives that at first sight strike the general public as being more inspired by peaceful motives. This is a distortion of reality: support for ‘Israel’, the most belligerent state in the Middle East, the only state in the region in possession of (over 300) nuclear arms, and the only ‘Ziocracy’ where ones ethnic background automatically categorizes one as having less rights than others, can never be truthfully designated as ‘peace-loving’.

Secondly, the apparently human inclination of the masses to flock around the famous without delving deeply into their philosophies, brings multitudes of people close to positive truth-distorting evaluations of the Zionist state. For example, progressive Arabs who embrace Mona Eltahawy’s feminist activities, are inclined to also automatically defend their idol’s views on ‘Israel’, simply because they are already in a state of adoration of her person. Another example involves Maikel Nabil: when progressive activists rallied for him due to his unjust incarceration by SCAF, his shocking pro-Israel views seemed to be lumped together with his anti-SCAF views under the label of ‘freedom of speech’, effectively paving the way for the perceived ‘right’ of Egyptians to view ‘Israel’ in an undeservingly positive and gruesomely distorted loving manner.

The Struggle Goes on

The true and original struggle of the Palestinians is a struggle against Zionism, and this is entirely incompatible with the views mentioned above. Normalization must therefore be opposed, vocally, directly, loudly and clearly. There is definitely a need for increased activity on this front, since anti-normalization and BDS do not enjoy the support of mass media, unlike the voices of normalization.

If this means that these voices need to be confronted even on a personal level, then so be it. It may not be a pleasant thing to do, and some might argue that it distracts from calling attention to the continuing atrocities that the Zionist state is inflicting on a daily basis upon the defenseless Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. However, as has been argued in the article “Anti-normalization: an necessary part of BDS campaigning”, calling attention to these injustices will remain highly ineffective if the public is simultaneously exposed by mass media to Arab voices that aim to paint a misleading image of ‘Israel’ as if it were a beacon of civilization, and a saviour for mankind.

In other words: if you value BDS and wish it to be effective, and if you believe in opposing the racist ideology of Zionism, one of your tasks is also to confront those who suck up to power for their own personal gain. And since their number is increasing, it looks like you have work to do.

– Tariq Shadid is a Palestinian surgeon living in the Middle East, and has written numerous essays about the Palestinian issue over the years. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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Arab participation at Israeli security summit enrages BDS activists

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/hub.1326407570.html

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad speaks during the annual international conference on security and policy in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, on 2 February 2010. (Photo: AFP – Jack Guez)

Published Monday, January 30, 2012

The participation of Arab officials and institutions at a major Israeli security conference has drawn staunch criticism from Palestinian and human rights activists.
The annual Herzliya conference, which includes high-profile guest speakers focusing on Israel’s major security challenges, invited a number of key Arab speakers, including Jordan’s Prince el Hassan bin Talal and senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat.

Omar Barghouti of the Palestinian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel slammed Arab involvement at the conference as “an act of complicity in the promotion of Israeli occupation and apartheid.”

The conference, which is being held for the 12th year, aims at enhancing Israel’s national security through developing the country’s military and intelligence fields.

“The participation of any Arab speaker…[is] a move that undermines our struggle for freedom and our right to return and self-determinism,” Barghouti said.

The conference is being held under the name of “In the Eye of the Storm: Israel and the Middle East” and will be attended by Israeli and international speakers as well as several Arab political, business and academic figures.

Riad al-Khouri

Salman Shaikh

Some of the most prominent participants also include Salman Shaikh, Director of the Brookings Doha Center, and Riad al-Khouri, a member of the International Council of Quest-scope in Amman as well as others.

“The Palestinian civil society calls on all Arab participants to immediately withdraw from the Herzliya conference and respect the demands of the majority of the Palestinians who fully support the BDS campaign,” Barghouti added.

Herzliya’s website listed Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) chief negotiator, as a speaker at the conference, but an official source told al-Akhbar that he was never invited to the conference and therefore will not be attending it.

The official, who wished to remain anonymous, said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official was the only member of the PLO to be invited to the Israeli conference, but declined the invitation.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Embassy in Lebanon – who also wished to remain anonymous – declined to confirm who of the PLO was invited and would attend.

However, sources in Ramallah told Barghouti that Erekat had been invited to the conference, but withdrew following pressure from the Palestinian civil society.

“If true, this would crucially deny other Arab participants their Palestinian excuse,” Barghouti said.
“We hope that all Arab – and international – participants will withdraw from this shameful conference. Raising awareness about this form of Arab complicity is a key goal of our campaign.”

BDS campaigners aim to increase Israel’s international isolation and raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians suffering under Israeli military occupation.

“Our campaign for a boycott of the Herzliya conference is based on this meeting’s singular importance in building Israel’s strategy, especially in the security and military fields, to enhance its oppressive system of settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid,” he explained.

Barghouti said Israel is “keen to display” the Arab officials and figures at the conference since it “boosts its propaganda efforts and cover up its increasingly isolated regime.”

The BDS activist also condemned the participation of the Brookings Doha Center, whose director is participating in the event despite the institution working to cement itself in the Arab world.
An “academic endeavor should never justify complicity in covering up grave violations of human rights and international law,” Barghouti said.

“At a time when BDS is achieving spectacular successes and turning Israel into a world pariah, these Arab participants are knowingly colluding in Israeli propaganda efforts, siding with the wrong side of history.”

Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha Center failed to respond to an interview request before this story went to publish.
(Al-Akhbar)

Hezbollah Denounces Arab Participation in Herzilya Conference

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30 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla Lebanese politicians still block Palestinian rights

Franklin Lamb
Shatila Camp
Graphics by Alex

Al-Manar

We all know is it not just American and Lebanese politicians who use Palestinian refugees as political footballs during electoral campaigns. But they are currently the two most egregious apart from most Zionist politicians in temporarily occupied Palestine.

In the US, it would not be a difficult task to find even more revolting and groveling intellectual “half-men” to borrow a phrase from Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar Assad than Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich during their recent “debate” in Jacksonville Florida.

While a high percentage of Republican Jewish voters will go to the polls in this winner take all primary, Mitt and Newt are also pondering their national fundraising networks as they gratuitously misrepresented history and betrayed their claimed religious and moral beliefs.
Romney repeated his screed that President Obama “threw Israel under the bus” by following international law, seven UN Security Council Resolution and World opinion by designating the pre-1967 borders as the starting point for peace talks. He also complained that America’s President “disrespected” Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when Obama spoke recently at the UN and mentioned in passing illegal Israeli settlement building but did not discuss retaliatory rockets being fired from Gaza into occupied Palestinian territory.

“Native” Gingrich

Genuflecting just as obsequiously to the Zionist lobby, Gingrich insisted to Florida voters once again that “Palestinians are an ‘invented people who historically were considered Jordanians and Syrians.”  No one in the audience was so impolite as to remind the claimed student of history that Jordan did not even exist until created by the pro-Zionist British occupiers of Palestine, well into the 20^th Century, while Palestinians have lived in Palestine for more than 3000 years.  While more than 95% of Zionist colonists have zero historical links to Palestine and their genealogical roots are in Europe, Russia and elsewhere, despite the fact that millions have invaded Palestine seeking free land and US government funded cash and housing handouts.  Morally and legally these colonists have no right to even one grain of sand in Palestine.

Source:  In the 1890. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. The Jewish population mainly due to immigration to about 10% . During British Mandatory the Jewish settlement raied sharply specially between 1930 and 1947

Approximate population growth in Mandatory Palestine

Year	Source	Total	Moslems		Jews		Christians		Others
			(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)	(No.)	(%)
1922	Census	752,048	589,177	78.34	83,790	11.14	71,464	9.50	7,617	1.01
1931	Census	1,033,314	759,700	73.52	174,606	16.90	88,907	8.60	10,101	0.98
1937	Estimate	1,383,320	875,947	63.32	386,084	27.91	109,769	7.94	11,520	0.83
1945	Survey2	1,845,560	1,076,780	58.35	608,230	32.96	145,060	7.86	15,490	0.84
19471	Projection	1,955,260	1,135,269	58.06	650,000	33.24	153,621	7.86	16370	0.84

Newt again promised his audience that on his first day as President, he will for sure issue an Executive Order moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another violation of International law.

Florida’s nearly 640,000 Jews are just 3.4 percent of Florida’s population. But because they vote in extraordinarily high numbers, they are 6 to 8 percent of Florida’s general election turnout but not of course when it comes to Republican primaries.  Yet one recent poll estimates that 52% of the state’s registered Jewish voters would support a Republican presidential ticket such is their mistrust of Obama and what he might do in a second term with respect to occupied Palestine.

As with his rival Mitt, President Newt’s first foreign trip will be to Israel.   With these latter two pledges Newt joins 19 Presidential primary aspirants who since 1967 have made similar promises. Fortunately, for what is left of American Humanitarian values, not one has been elected President.

Lebanese style anti-Palestinian political speech is more sophisticated and subtle, like the Lebanese people themselves,  and nearly always devolves to the gut wrenching warning, delivered with a straight face,  that “if we allow Palestinian refugees the right to work or to own a home (as required by International Law and currently enjoyed by refugees in 192 other countries) it might encourage them to get lazy and become too comfortable in Lebanon and they might, God save us all, seek naturalization.  And this could interfere with the Palestinian refugees internationally guaranteed Right to Return to their homes in occupied Palestine which Lebanese strongly support for their brotherly and sisterly guests.

Lebanese politicians, including every party and religious grouping bar not none, except the Druze and the National Syrian Socialist Party, use voter’s fear of naturalization (in American think immigration) to undercut growing human rights pressure for Lebanon to give Palestinians elementary human rights.

A rare exception for a Lebanese politician shocked many here when earlier this month, to his eternal credit and honor, Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour became the first Lebanese Cabinet member to make an official visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in six years when he toured south Beirut’s Burj al-Barajneh camp before signing a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). The agreement will enable UNRWA for the first time to work in coordination with the Social Affairs Ministry to provide some services to some of the most vulnerable people in the camps.

The lack of employment opportunities for Palestine refugee prolong and intensify their hardship and poverty.  In the five Southern Lebanon camps, according to a recent Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and UN International Labor Organization study, more than 81 per cent of all refugees are living in abject poverty. Young people are particularly affected, with unemployment for Palestinians between 15 and 24 reaching 60%. The employments figures are not must better in the northern camps.

Speaking at the event, Faour called on his fellow politicians to follow his lead and experience firsthand conditions in Lebanon’s 12 Refugee camps.  “Whoever wants to rediscover his humanity has to see the living conditions in Palestinian camps in Lebanon” Minister Faour told Lebanon’s Parliament.  “We are used to bringing Palestinians to discussions in fancy hotels and then sending them back to the misery in the camps. We decided to invert these traditions by coming to the camps.”

 Unfortunately Minister Abu Faour undercut some of the positive contribution of his visit by emphasizing to the media “the difficult relationship between Lebanon and the Palestinian population. The Lebanese government has consistently declined to grant rights to Palestinian refugees for fear that it would pave the way to naturalization, which it argues would diminish their right to return to Palestine.”

It would be difficult to find one Palestinian in Lebanon, or any advocate of human rights here, who truly believes the Lebanese politicians claimed notion of concern for the sanctity of the Palestinians Right of Return justifies keeping a quarter million human being in the most degrading squalor while outlawing even the right to work or to own a home out of an altruistic concern to keep hallow some of the refugees other international rights.  Palestinian refugees in Lebanon reject more than any of the politicians here any form of settlement, naturalization, implantation or tawtin.  They have a county just across the southern Lebanese border and their goal, now in its 64^th year, is to return without more delay.

Many Palestinians in Lebanon’s camp mention a new energy among their fellow refugees as a result of the continuing, broadening and deepening Arab and Islamic Awakening which erupted one year ago in Tunisia and whose spread continues.

The swelling bud of intifada! is also being observed by foreigners here and as Palestinian camp residents invite Pope Benedict to visit their camps in the Spring during his reported visit to Lebanon, one idea from kids at Ramallah school in Shatila Camp is for the Vicar of Christ to hold a Mass for tens of thousands in the new Cite Sportiff, on the edge this Camp.  For it was at this sports center 30 years ago  that part two of the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla was organized by Israeli and Phalange troops on September 18^th and   for which, like the other 43 hours of uninterrupted  slaughter, no one person has ever been held accountable. (See Children of Shatila – Part 1, Part 2)

It would be an enormously powerful historic event should Pope Benedict fill Cite Sportiff with people of good will, and there are many here like Minister Faour, from all the confessions and political parties, joined by all religious and civil society leaders in Lebanon, and with the Pope’s blessing and admonition for all of us to follow in the path of Mohammad and Jesus and their decuples, that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon might be granted even the most elementary human rights.

Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign.  He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.

He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

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• A Letter to Janet: Will anyone remember? Does anyone really care anymore?
• Samir Geagea’s ‘greens’… 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Discrimination of the Jews

FAD

A French opinion :” monopolist, exploiter and corrupter “

I cannot say, exactly, why almost all the Jews

were discriminated and persecuted

during the whole course of History.

I can only say 3 things, with certainty :

1– The Golden Age of any Jews and of Judaism

was only under the Arab/Muslim rule.

2– Until 1948 and until Palestine was stolen

we the Arabs , did not consider them as our enemies

nor as inferior , nor as aggressors ,
nor as occupiers , nor as usurpers,
nor as intruders,
nor as racist-colonialists…

3- The Israelis of the twentieth century
have nothing in common with
any character from the Bible stories
nor even any Bible myths.

(any Greek-person has more historical-claim on today´s Turkey
than any “Jew ” has on Palestine )

Raja Chemayel
an Arab, born 6 weeks before Israel

Posted byTlaxcalaat9:53 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!