Let’s Ask About The Rogue State’s Chemical Weapons

by   Stuart Littlewood   on   September 7, 2013

They don’t want us to know about Israel’s nukes

So let’s ask about the rogue state’s chemical weapons

UK Foreign Office ministers seem to have great difficulty answering simple questions about Israel’s terror capabilities. It’s as if they don’t want to admit to the awful truth about the violent and lawless regime to which they’ve pledged everlasting support.

So it was time for another “Dear Henry….”

To: Henry Bellingham MP, North West Norfolk

6 September 2013

Dear Henry,

Thank you for asking the question about Israel’s nukes.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130904/text/130904w0001.htm#1309053000052

Mr Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent assessment he has made of the likelihood of the Government of Israel having a nuclear weapons programme; and if he will make a statement. [167222]

Alistair Burt: We have regular discussions with the Government of Israel on a wide range of nuclear-related issues. Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons programme. We encourage Israel to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty and call on them to agree a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr Burt insults the whole nation with the same empty and dismissive reply he gave Sir Bob Russell two months ago, and which prompted your further question (please see my email of 13 July below for comparison). What the British public (and indeed their elected representatives) need is an estimate of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability by our own and international intelligence sources.

May I ask you please to repeat the question, and keep repeating it, until we get some sense from Mr Burt?

Turning to the chemical weapons issue, the allegations against the Assad regime in Syria and the West’s threats of punitive action, foreign secretary William Hague misled the country when he stated on the FCO website https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-calls-for-strong-international-response-to-chemical-attack-in-syria :

“This is the first use of chemical warfare in the 21st century. It has to be unacceptable, we have to confront something that is a war crime, something that is a crime against humanity. If we don’t do so, then we will have to confront even bigger war crimes in the future.

“So we continue to look for a strong response from the international community that is legal, that is proportionate and that is designed to deter the further and future use of chemical weapons…. It’s very important for a regime like the Assad regime to know that there is a clear response when they cross such an important line. As I say, this is the first use of chemical warfare in this century.”

Hague knows, or should do, that white phosphorus was used by Israel against the densely-packed civilian population of Gaza in 2008/9. We didn’t hear him or Cameron or Burt urging punitive strikes against Tel Aviv. As they now crank up talk of military intervention in Syria we’re told that Syria has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, as if that settles any doubt about Assad’s culpability. But neither has Egypt and she still receives massive military aid from the US.

The CWC declares that “all States Parties have agreed to chemically disarm by destroying any stockpiles of chemical weapons they may hold and any facilities which produced them, as well as any chemical weapons they abandoned on the territory of other States Parties in the past.” The Israeli regime still hasn’t ratified the treaty, showing the same contempt for chemical weapons control as for nuclear non-proliferation. The US is a signatory but also a major violator of the CWC while Israel won’t open its chemical weapons facilities (or nuclear programmes) to international inspection.

As I write, incontrovertible evidence seems hard to come by, the UN inspectors’ findings are awaited so the jury is still out on who was responsible for the poison gas atrocity in Syria. Many people suspect that the real ‘axis of evil’ – i.e. the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel – are the likely perpetrators. After all, they are the region’s chief troublemakers. And Israel has appalling ‘form’. In its 1982 war on Lebanon an international commission concluded that the Israelis “committed acts of aggression contrary to international law”, that the government of Israel had no valid reasons for invading Lebanon, and that Israel was responsible for the killings in Sabra and Shatila, which the United Nations General Assembly declared an act of genocide.

In Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, Amnesty International noted the destruction of entire civilian neighbourhoods by Israeli forces, attacks on bridges with no apparent strategic value, and attacks on infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. AI also highlighted the IDF’s use of white phosphorus shells (a crime repeated in Gaza in 2008/9).

After the ceasefire some parts of southern Lebanon were uninhabitable for a long time due to unexploded cluster bombs left lying around by the Israelis.

Would you please, therefore, put another Parliamentary Question, this time requesting British and allied intelligence assessments of Israel’s chemical weapons capability and asking what pressure is being exerted to persuade the Israeli regime to ratify the CWC and open itself to international inspection? The same question should also be raised about Saudi Arabia as that obnoxious regime actually signed the CWC. Then we might all begin to see the picture more clearly.

I was unable to find your name on the Commons voting lists after last week’s debate. Were you present?

With thanks again for your efforts, and kind regards…

—– Original Message —–

To: BELLINGHAM, Henry

cc: Sir Bob Russell MP, Colchester

Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2013

Subject: Written Answers – Israel’s Nukes

Dear Henry,

Written Answers — Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Israel (8 July 2013)

Bob Russell (Colchester, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what estimate he has made of the number of nuclear warheads possessed by Israel; and if he will make a statement.Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 8 July 2013, c41W)

Alistair Burt (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Afghanistan/South Asia, counter terrorism/proliferation, North America, Middle East and North Africa), Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

We have regular discussions with the Government of Israel on a wide range of nuclear-related issues. Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons programme. We encourage Israel to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty and call on them to agree a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr Burt ducks the question. We all know that Israel is evasive about its nuclear weapons programme. Bob Russell asks for HM Government’s estimate of the number of nuclear warheads in Israel’s possession. We have an intelligence service, don’t we? There can be no sensible discussion about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons plans (and certainly no sabre-rattling or other silly threats) without factoring-in Israel’s already established nuke stockpile and delivery systems. Why is the Israeli situation so ‘unmentionable’? Let’s take the lid off, so this nation can have a good look and be aware of the stark facts.

Would you please lodge a written question, requiring a written answer, asking the minister to respond properly and in detail to Sir Bob?

Many thanks,

The public are becoming increasingly aware that prime minister Cameron and foreign secretary Hague are both fervent members of Conservative Friends of Israel, Hague since he was 15. Cameron is a self-declared Zionist and both have pledged undying love for Israel no matter what. Middle East minister Alistair Burt, was an officer of the party’s Friends of Israel lobby group.

They appear to have formed a defensive shield around the racist regime and seem determined to keep a lid firmly on inconvenient truths.

All three were happily gung-ho for war in Iraq, according to theyworkforyou.com, and their latest headlong rush to intervene militarily in Syria – now happily thwarted by Parliament – raises questions that will have to be answered on Judgement Day, if not before.

Stuart Littlewood

6 September 2013

Selective Impunity Rules!

by Stuart Littlewood on September 2, 2013

Selective impunity is a Western speciality

Punishment for Syria, rewards for Syria’s neighbour Israel

US Secretary of State John Kerry accuses Syrian government forces of killing 1,429 people, including 426 children, in a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last week described as an “inconceivable horror” and “a crime against conscience”.
President Obama is considering lethal punitive strikes against the Assad regime, strikes that Britain, for one, will not take part in.

In a press release yesterday (Friday) the US government says it concludes “with high confidence” that the Syrian government carried out the chemical weapons attack against opposition elements in Damascus on August 21, and that any scenario in which the opposition did the dirty deed is “highly unlikely”.

The assessment states: “We have a body of information, including past Syrian practice, that leads us to conclude that regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on August 21. We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence.” Oh, I heard the Israelis supplied that titbit.

But, says the assessment, “we will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place”. Will those gaps be closed before, or after, the cruise missile button is pushed?

It adds, rather mysteriously: “There is a substantial body of information that implicates the Syrian government’s responsibility in the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21. As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners.” So we ordinary citizens, who will witness the punishment and in whose name punishment will be inflicted, cannot question or challenge the ‘evidence’ on which it is based.

How extraordinary that the figures quoted – 1.429 including 426 children – are almost identical to those slaughtered in Gaza by the Israeli regime’s thugs during Operation Cast Lead. I don’t recall nearly so much moral outrage and condemnation from the White House for that atrocity, or any talk of lethal ‘punishment’ to be inflicted on Tel Aviv.

Let’s remind ourselves that in the winter of 2008/9 Israel intensively bombed Gaza for three weeks killing 1,396 Palestinians including 345 children, 110 women and 117 elderly people and injuring and maiming some 5,450 more. Israel also destroyed or damaged 58,000 homes (ICAHD puts it nearer 42,000 of which 4,247 were totally destroyed), 280 schools, 1,500 factories and water and sewage installations.

And Israel’s forces used prohibited weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus shells. White phosphorus, Mr Kerry, is an extremely nasty chemical weapon. Wasn’t that a red line?
Furthermore, Israel blocked necessary materials for reconstruction.

How would Boston, Massachusetts, have looked after such an onslaught?

Next came Operation Pillar of Defense, an eight-day Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation launched against the Gaza Strip last November. The IDF struck more than 1,500 sites in the process killing 133 Palestinians of whom 53 were civilians. An estimated 840 were wounded and many families displaced. One Israeli airstrike killed ten members of the same family.

Throughout the crisis western leaders, news readers, chat-show hosts and assorted pundits focused on the “thousands” of rockets fired by Hamas. Actually some 1,500 were fired, 10 percent failing to clear Gaza’s boundary fence, following an upsurge of IDF provocation attacks on Gazan civilians in the days leading up to the operation. The continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip and the never-ending occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem were also reasons. Was anyone keeping count of the numbers of state-of-the-art bombs, rockets, tank-shells and other ordnance fired by Israel into the densely-packed population of Gaza?

What would be the Palestinians’ reward if Hamas scrapped all their rockets tomorrow?

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was reported as saying: “There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately in order to allow the situation to de-escalate.”

Cowardly acts? Who is the coward? Israel, which uses sophisticated state-of-the-art weaponry (courtesy of the US taxpayer) to relentlessly attack an unarmed, half-starved and overcrowded population who have nowhere to run because their borders have been sealed 24/7 for 6 years, or Gaza’s guerrillas who fight back with anything that comes to hand including garden-shed rockets?
What if Hamas dumped all their rockets in the sea tomorrow? Would the illegal blockade be lifted? Would Gazans enjoy the same freedoms as other nations? Would their democratically elected government be allowed to get on and govern? Would they be able to open their sea port to foreign ships and rebuild and operate their airport? Would they be able to import and export and carry on trade and develop their economy and prosper like other countries?

Would they be allowed to develop and benefit from their offshore gas field? Would their fishermen be allowed to fish in unpolluted waters? Would their young people be able to come and go and take up places at foreign universities?

Would Israel clear out of Gaza’s airspace permanently? Would the Israeli navy cease its piracy and stay out of Palestinian territorial waters? Would you and I be able to visit Gaza direct?
Fat chance. None of this would suit America’s friend Israel.

There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal squatter ‘settlements’, the colonization (a war crime), the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and ‘administrative detention’ of civilians and the massive interference with freedom of movement. Nothing has changed for West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT FIRE ROCKETS. And there is no sign of an end to their torment.

The bloody assaults on Gaza therefore have more to do with Israel’s ambition to expand racial dominance in the Holy Land, make their occupation permanent, seize Gaza’s offshore gas field and hang on to Syria’s Golan Heights – all thanks to the impunity guaranteed by America and its endless Security Council vetoes – than the paltry damage from crude and erratic rocket-fire. The Palestinians holed up in Gaza are simply in the way of the Grand Plan and must be removed or totally subdued.
During Pillar of Defence Interior Minister Eli Yishai said: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years.”

According to RT Network  http://rt.com/news/israel-gaza-hamas-war-103/ ….

Journalist, Gilad Sharon, the son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in an editorial in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday called for Gaza to be flattened like the US flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 with an atomic bomb.

“We need to flatten all of Gaza. The American’s didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough – so they hit Nagasaki too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire,” ranted Sharon.

As the former Prime Minister’s son publicly urged the military to wipe Gaza off the map, a member of the Knesset and the National Unity Party, Michael Ben-Ari, called for Israeli soldiers to kill Gazans without thought or mercy. “There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives – mow them down!” it was reported on the Hakol HaYehudi website.

Israel Katz, the country’s transport minister, has called “for Gaza to be bombed so hard the population has to flee into Egypt.” While Avi Dichter, the minster of home front defense, has urged the IDF to “reformat” Gaza – to wipe it clean with bombs.

Obama, Cameron and Hague pledge support for these maniacs, implicating all of us in their foul crimes. I’d like to consign those prating politicians (and their families, for punitive bombing engulfs women, children and old folk too) to just one night of the London blitz and see how they’d like it. London at least had defences, properly functioning emergency services and an extensive subway network. Gaza doesn’t. Nor does Damascus, yet.

Actually I’d like to include the entire United Nations Security Council in that chilling experience
The Palestinians had no history of violence until their lands were threatened then partitioned and finally overrun by a brutal intruder whose greed is never satisfied. It is interesting that demands for Palestinians to cease their terror campaign (if you buy the idea that resistance = terror) are never accompanied by corresponding demands of Israel.

Selective impunity rules!

WHO IS THE THREAT TO WORLD PEACE? CHRISTIANS, JEWS, OR MUSLIMS!

 

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution and  the downfall of the US Puppet Ruler the Shah, Iran has been an Islamic state. In that interval of time, 1979 to the present, Iran has not invaded anyone. Not once.   People of all religions live in peace in Iran, even Jews, who find life so comfortable in Iran they refused an offer by the government of Israel to emigrate!

In the same period of time, Israel, a self-declared Jewish state, attacked Iraq in 1981, bombing the power station at Osirik, claiming it was a clandestine weapons factory. Subsequent examination of the ruins following the 2003 invasion proved Israel had lied. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. This led to the Massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. In February 2003 Israel staged incursions into Gaza and Nablus.  In September 2007 Israel bombed Syria, again insisting they were destroying a clandestine weapons laboratory. Again there was no evidence to support Israel’s claims. In 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon, killing 1200, mostly civilians, several UN observers, and littering the landscape with land mines on their way out. In February 2008 Israel again raided Gaza,  killing over 100. HAMAS agreed to a cease fire and kept it for 6 months until November 4, when Israel again attacked without warning, killing 6 HAMAS members, and launching operation CAST LEAD. 1300 Gazans, mostly civilians, were killed. Israel lost 13 soldiers.  Violations of international law included the use of White Phosphorus incendiary bombs against civilians and non-military targets. The  United Nations investigated, but Israel refused to cooperate. In May 2010, Israel attacked an international aid flotilla bringing food and medical supplies to Gaza in international waters. 9 people were murdered including an American from New York.

In the same period of time, the United States, officially a secular nation but predominantly Christian, attacked El Salvador (1980), Libya (1981), Sinai (1982), Lebanon (1982 1983), Egypt (1983), Grenada (1983), Honduras (1983),   Chad (1983), Persian Gulf (1984), Libya (1986) , Bolivia (1986), Iran (1987), Persian Gulf (1987), Kuwait (1987), Iran (1988),  Honduras (1988), Panama (1988), Libya (1989), Panama (1989),  Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru (1989), Philippines (1989), Panama (1989-1990), Liberia (1990), Saudi Arabia (1990), Iraq (1991), Zaire (1991), Sierra Leone (1992), Somalia (1992), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1993 to present), Macedonia (1993), Haiti (1994), Macedonia (1994), Bosnia (1995), Liberia (1996), Central African Republic (1996), Albania (1997), Congo/Gabon (1997), Sierra Leon (1997), Cambodia (1997), Iraq (1998), Guinea/Bissau (1998), Kenya/Tanzania (1998 to 1999), Afghanistan/Sudan (1998), Liberia (1998), East Timor (1999), Serbia (1999), Sierra Leon (2000), Yemen (2000), East Timor (2000), Afghanistan (2001 to present), Yemen (2002), Philippines (2002) , Cote d’Ivoire (2002),  Iraq (2003 to present), Liberia (2003), Georgia/Djibouti (2003), Haiti (2004), Georgia/Djibouti/Kenya/Ethiopia/Yemen/Eritrea War on Terror (2004), Pakistan drone attacks (2004 to present),  Somalia (2007), South Ossetia/Georgia (2008), Syria (2008), Yemen (2009), Haiti (2010), etc. etc. etc. etc.

So, who is the danger to world peace?

10 Problems with the Latest Excuse for War on Syria

davidswanson – Posted on 19 June 2013

If you own a television or read a newspaper you’ve probably heard that we need another war because the Syrian government used chemical weapons.

If you own a computer and know where to look you’ve probably heard that there isn’t actually any evidence for that claim.

Below are 10 reasons why this latest excuse for war is no good EVEN IF TRUE.

1. War is not made legal by such an excuse.  It can’t be found in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the United Nations Charter, or the U.S. Constitution.  It can, however, be found in U.S. war propaganda of the 2002 vintage.  (Who says our government doesn’t promote recycling?)

2. The United States itself possesses and uses internationally condemned weapons, including white phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium.  Whether you praise these actions, avoid thinking about them, or join me in condemning them, they are not a legal or moral justification for any foreign nation to bomb us, or to bomb some other nation where the U.S. military is operating.  Killing people to prevent their being killed with the wrong kind of weapons is a policy that must come out of some sort of sickness.  Call it Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

3. An expanded war in Syria could become regional or global with uncontrollable consequences.  Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Russia, China, the United States, the Gulf states, the NATO states . . . does this sound like the sort of conflict we want?  Does it sound like a conflict anyone will survive?  Why in the world risk such a thing?

4. Just creating a “no fly zone” would involve bombing urban areas and unavoidably killing large numbers of people.  This happened in Libya and we looked away.  But it would happen on a much larger scale in Syria, given the locations of the sites to be bombed.  Creating a “no fly zone” is not a matter of making an announcement, but of dropping bombs.

5. Both sides in Syria have used horrible weapons and committed horrible atrocities.  Surely even those who imagine people should be killed to prevent their being killed with different weapons can see the insanity of arming both sides to protect each other side.  Why is it not, then, just as insane to arm one side in a conflict that involves similar abuses by both?

6. With the United States on the side of the opposition in Syria, the United States will be blamed for the opposition’s crimes.  Most people in Western Asia hate al Qaeda and other terrorists.  They are also coming to hate the United States and its drones, missiles, bases, night raids, lies, and hypocrisy.  Imagine the levels of hatred that will be reached when al Qaeda and the United States team up to overthrow the government of Syria and create an Iraq-like hell in its place.

7. An unpopular rebellion put into power by outside force does not usually result in a stable government.  In fact there is not yet on record a case of U.S. humanitarian war benefitting humanity or of nation-building actually building a nation.  Why would Syria, which looks even less auspicious than most potential targets, be the exception to the rule?

8. This opposition is not interested in creating a democracy, or — for that matter — in taking instructions from the U.S. government.  On the contrary, blowback from these allies is likely.  Just as we should have learned the lesson of lies about weapons by now, our government should have learned the lesson of arming the enemy of the enemy long before this moment.

9. The precedent of another lawless act by the United States, whether arming proxies or engaging directly, sets a dangerous example to the world and to those in Washington for whom Iran is next on the list.

10. A strong majority of Americans, despite all the media’s efforts thus far, opposes arming the rebels or engaging directly.  Instead, a plurality supports providing humanitarian aid.

We might better spread democracy by example than by bomb.

There are nonviolent pro-democracy movements in Bahrain and Turkey and elsewhere, and our government doesn’t lift a finger in support.

But if you remember all those years of protesting wars and wishing millions of foolish partisan Republicans would join us in protesting blatant mass-murder even though the president was a Republican, I have good news for you.  The Republicans are leading the way in pretending to oppose war this time.  So, if you Democrats, who I’m sure were 100% sincere in opposing wars some years back are still ready to act, maybe — just maybe — we can build right now the sort of broad movement we’ve wanted.

If you’re not too busy.

Hogwash, Syria won’t use chemical WMDs against its people

US-backed al-Qaeda militants in Syria

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Press TV

 “Oh, really? Well then Mr. President, you and NATO should start by arresting those US, British, and Israeli officials who okayed and used WMDs against civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. Remember the white phosphorous in Fallujah? The US and British military forces attacked an entire civilian population with their arsenal of chemical weapons in 2004.”

Syria will not use any chemical or biological weapons against its own people. The Obama Administration and company are just recycling the same lines that were used months earlier against Damascus.

These statements are disingenuous and hollow. They can easily be deconstructed as rhetoric. All we need to do it look at recent history.

In 2011, were not similar charges put forward against another Arab country? Were they not claiming that the late Muammar Qaddafi would use chemical weapons against his own population? Was it not claimed even earlier that Qaddafi and the Libyan military had brought in black-skinned African mercenaries to kill Libyan citizens? Or that Libyan jets were killing Libyan protesters? What happened to the genocide in Benghazi?

Now there is nothing but silence and lost memories. Claims were made, morality and responsibility were invoked, and then a rising Arab country was bombarded. An engine of economic progress in Africa was halted in its tracks overnight and an entire society robbed.

There was also the textbook case of Iraq even before the lies about the Libyan Jamahiriya. Did not the Bush Jr. Administration, Tony Blair, and their circle of war criminals-in-office not lie to the entire international community and say that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and weapons of mass destruction in 2003? What happened to those WMDs? This is not something that can easily be scoffed at. More than one million Iraqis died over the lies conjured by the Anglo-American duo. Not to mention the ecological damage and the intellectual genocide perpetrated against Iraq’s intelligentsia and professional class.

Let us be clear, Syria threatened to use chemical weapons against any invading force on July 23, 2012. Firstly, the statement was made in a defensive context. Secondly, it was directed against military threats. This is very different from planning on using chemical weapons against your own citizens, specifically civilians.

Obama and NATO are sharing the same Script

It is no mere coincidence that both the Obama Administration and NATO are now singing the same threatening tune against the Syrian Arab Republic. Both the US government and NATO are ominously using the same talking points. Of course there is a reason for this of course, and it is not due to any humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.

The threats come at a time when NATO is deploying Patriot missiles to Turkey’s border with Syria under the Orwellian pretext of protecting Turkey’s skies from a Syrian attack. The last thing that the government in Syria will do is attack Turkey. Albeit Israel is the exception, Damascus is too busy trying to clean house to even pose a threat against any of its neighbors. Moreover, is it not Turkey which is openly hosting anti-government militias and arming them from its territory? So, who is really threatening who?

Rhetorically, red lines are being drawing in the shifting sand of the Levant. Obama and NATO have warned that they will not tolerate or allow the Syrian government to use chemical weapons against it own people. They have threatened to hold the government in Damascus to account.

Oh, really? Well then Mr. President, you and NATO should start by arresting those US, British, and Israeli officials who okayed and used WMDs against civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. Remember the white phosphorous in Fallujah? The US and British military forces attacked an entire civilian population with their arsenal of chemical weapons in 2004.

Unlike the US and UK, Syria is part of the small handful of countries that is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

What happened to the treaty obligations of the US and UK?

It is funny how the resistance in Fallujah was also called an insurgency back then too. So the US and UK considered Iraqis fighting two invading armies an “insurgency” while they consider foreign-backed militias in Syria as “rebels” and “freedom fighters.” An Orwellian world it is indeed.

As for Israel it is also guilty of the same war crimes. Jacob Edery, an Israeli cabinet minister, even admitted in 2006 that Tel Aviv used white phosphorus after the Red Cross and human rights organizations leaved charges against Israel about using chemical weapons on civilians. It is not Damascus, but Tel Aviv that is the home of pundits and officials who frequently speak about “Doomsday weapons” and the “Samson Option” when referring to their nuclear WMDs.

Yes Mr. President, hold people who use chemical weapons against civilians to account! I could not agree with you anymore.

Will any of the US or British or Israeli leaders involved in these crimes and disregard for legally binding treaties signed by the US be held to “account?” Or is “accountability” a word used as a club or iron stick to beat and punish any government that dares to have a different opinion or foreign policy from yours? Or are you, Mr. President, using the time-honored double-standards that are a hallmark of US foreign policy?

A Controversial question to think over

The Syrians are trying to prevent their chemical weapons from falling into the hands of the GCC/NATO-sponsored anti-government militias that are menacing the Syrian countryside. This is what the Syrian Army has been presently doing. Obama and NATO know that very well too, just like they knew that Libya was not using its military jets to kill Libyan protesters.

International law is a matter of mere convenience. The very same countries posturing negatively towards Syria from a moral high ground have themselves lost their own moral compasses. The US, Britain, France, and NATO have not only refused to commit themselves to a “no first use” policy on their own WMD, specifically nuclear bombs, but have reserved the rights to us nuclear weapons in any war or conflict as a means of insuring their own victories. This includes any conflict with a non-nuclear state.

The US and its allies even deem the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) null and void in the scenario of a major war. What this means is that the NPT and international law are merely followed as a matter of convince by the US and its NATO allies. They will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons the moment that they think they will need them. Yet, they hold Syria to totally different standards.

Agree or disagree, Syria has reserved the right to use chemical weapons in a scenario where it is being invaded. Can Damascus be blamed for threatening to use chemical weapons to protect itself from foreign intervention? Especially in light of the position of the US to use nukes to ensure victories that are favorable to it and its allies. Why the double standards?

Chemical Weapons are a new excuses for aggression against Syria

Anyone that thinks that the US government has the best interests of the Syrian people at heart needs a history lesson. Better yet, they need to look at how Obama’s partners in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the feudal Arab petro-sheikhdoms are treating their own people. These feudal desert dictatorships answer their own protestors, who are demanding for democracy and basic civil rights, with bullets and tank fire.

Barak Obama, the CEO of Democracy Inc., wants to export his democratic success story from Libya to Syria very badly. His administration has been trying for over a year now without success. Forget the foreign fighters being exported to Syria from Libya. Forget the weapon supplies that the CIA has been gathering and sending to Syria and Lebanon from its secret base in Benghazi that worked under the cover of the US Department of State. Now Obama’s Democracy Inc. wants democracy to reign down on all Syria like bombs, literally.

What we see is a new sales pitch. First it was a mix of democracy and human rights. Then it became preventing genocide. Now the genocide theme is being continued, but a WMD dimension added.

The noose is being tightened around Syria. All the talk about chemical weapons is being used to justify the deployment of NATO’s missiles on the borders of Syria. The deployment of the Patriot missiles comes at a time when there are reports that there is a new aggressive push to rearm the anti-government forces in Syria. A “no-fly zone” or, as it is called in US/NATO doublespeak, a “humanitarian corridor” around Aleppo and Syria’s northern border territories is on the Obama Administration’s wish list. So the plot thickens and Democracy Inc. reinvent’s its brand with new marketing.

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!

New Mexico Jews Scream ‘Anti-Semitism!’ Over Sabeel Conference

By Richard Edmondson

It’s getting to be more than just a bit old-hat. A Jew who takes a dislike to something or other screams, “Anti-Semitism!”—and people go running for cover. And tragically cowardly Christians, in far too many cases, are the first to duck down the rabbit hole.

Last week I posted an article about an upcoming conference entitled “Justice: The Path to Peace in Palestine/Israel,” sponsored by the organization Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA). The conference is scheduled to take place this Friday and Saturday in Albuquerque, New Mexico and will feature workshops as well as a number of speakers, each offering their perspectives on how to achieve peace in the bloody and decades-old Palestine-Israel conflict. The speakers will include Palestinians, Israelis, as well as Americans.

Any hope, no matter how slim, of bringing about a resolution to this crisis is worth pursuing, but for a while now the conference has been under attack by local Jews in New Mexico—and on Friday things became especially strident with the publication in the Albuquerque Journal of an op-ed piece entitled “FOSNA Philosophy Just Anti-Semitism.” The piece is co-authored by Sam Sokolove, executive director of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, and Todd Goldblum, chair of the Israel Action Network-New Mexico, and their animosity toward Sabeel—an ecumenical group founded some ten years ago by Palestinian Christians—is markedly manifest throughout.

Perhaps there should be an “anti-defamation league” having the goal of exposing Jews who attempt to “defame” Gentiles with the anti-Semite label. Not only do Sokolove and Goldblum accuse Sabeel of “spreading vicious propaganda to assault Israel’s legitimacy,” but they also venture into such ticklish topics as the crucifixion of Christ, conveying the notion that the organization’s goals include laying “the ugly deicide charge against all the Jewish people” and may even seek to portray the Zionist state as “a country of Christ killers.”

No documentation is supplied to support these insinuations; they’re simply thrown in there. We also are informed that “Sabeel conferences are notorious for featuring speakers who vilify Israel,” although the authors don’t say when or if they ever attended a Sabeel conference in the past, or what led them to crystalize these conclusions.

Of course some countries on this earth very much merit “vilification,” and in my view Israel is one of them. Illegal settlements, bulldozing of homes, use of white phosphorous and other chemical weapons against a civilian population, and the shooting of Palestinian children—such as Abir Aramin, Iman al-Hams, Ahmed Samouni, and countless others (for a partial list of Palestinian children killed by Israelis go here )—are among only a few of the sins Israel will one day account for, at least if there is a God of justice in this world.

But achieving peace and an end to the occupation of Palestinian land seems to be FOSA’s only, or at least primary, goal—farmore so at any rate than simply “vilifying” Israel. For instance the organizers of this conference did not include a workshop on Israeli involvement in 9/11, although perhaps they should have. Why do I mention it? Because defense and intelligence officials and others are coming forward now in ever greater numbers and speaking out on 9/11, people such as Michael Scheuer, who has called the official 9/11 Commission report “a whitewash and a lie from top to bottom,” and Alan Sabrosky, who says it is “100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation.”

As Keven Barrett relates in a recent article, some officials are now even leaking insider information. “The two biggest recent leaks,” says Barrett, “are revelations by CIA asset Susan Lindauer that the CIA had detailed foreknowledge of 9/11 and attributed the controlled demolitions of the three NYC skyscrapers to ‘those goddamned Israelis’; and the assertion by Gwenyth Todd, who worked beside Richard Clarke on the National Security Council, that Clarke (who was publicly fired from an earlier job for being an Israeli spy) is the top suspect as hands-on controller of 9/11 from the US end.”

All we can do is wait and see how all this plays out. Sabrosky, for his own part, has predicted that, “If Americans ever know that Israel did this, they are going to scrub them off the earth.” The words have a foreboding resonance to be sure, but New Mexico’s discomposed Jewish Federation might take consolation. What we hear from Sabeel—whom Sokolove and Goldblum accuse of being “one-sided,” “inflammatory,” and “destructive” by nature—does not even approach this level of animus. The group is calling for a two-state solution, with a sovereign and independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital, living in peaceful coexistence with Israel—which is precisely what has been mandated in UN resolutions and has even been the position of previous US presidents. So what is it that has Sokolove and Goldblum so hot and bothered?

Well, maybe it’s this:

Israel must admit that it has committed an injustice against the Palestinian people and must accept responsibility for that. This means that reparation must be paid to all Palestinians who have suffered as a result of the conflict since 1948 whether they are Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or Palestinians living in the Diaspora. The road to healing and reconciliation passes through repentance, forgiveness and redress.

Or perhaps this:

“The people of the region–Palestinians and Israelis–both need and deserve a lasting peace, and security. With peace and security in place, bonds of acceptance and friendship can grow. It is no service to either community to promote a peace which flouts international law, ignores justice, and ultimately cannot endure since this will lead to continued bitterness and violence.”

Could be this:

“Since Israel acquired by force 77% of the land of Palestine in 1948, approximately 20% more than the United Nations had allotted, and established its state there, it is moral and right for Israel to return the whole of the areas captured in 1967, i.e. the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to the millions of Palestinians who need their own small sovereign state.”

Or this:

“Once the principles of an acceptable justice are applied, a peace treaty must be drawn up between the two states of Palestine and Israel guaranteeing the full sovereignty and territorial integrity of each including recognized borders, water rights, and other resources.”

Certainly this no doubt:

Jerusalem’s sovereignty must be shared by the two states of Palestine and Israel. The city must remain open for Palestinians, Israelis, and all. East Jerusalem can be the capital of Palestine while West Jerusalem can be the capital of Israel. Any agreement must protect the sanctity of the holy places and guarantee the rights of the three religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism on an equal basis. All illegal confiscation of land or expansion of areas by Israel within the walled city of Jerusalem since 1967 must be reversed.

All of the above are taken from the Jerusalem Sabeel Document: Principles for a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel, adopted in May of 2006. I challenge Sokolove and Goldblum to point to anything in the entire document that can be construed as “anti-Semitic.” They can’t. No one can. Because there’s nothing anti-Semitic about it. The document even acknowledges “the sufferings and injustices committed against Jews by the West, especially those inflicted in the holocaust,” a codicil which I, personally, would have omitted, but the Palestinian Christians of Sabeel evidently thought it was important to include. So it’s in there. The document also includes a quote from 1 Peter 3:11: “Seek peace and pursue it.”

In addition, if we go to the website of Sabeel’s Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jersalem we find the following vision statement:

“Sabeel affirms its commitment to make the gospel relevant ecumenically and spiritually in the lives of the local indigenous Church. Our faith teaches that following in the footsteps of Christ means standing for the oppressed, working for justice, and seeking peace-building opportunities, and it challenges us to empower local Christians. Since a strong civil society and a healthy community are the best supports for a vulnerable population, Sabeel strives to empower the Palestinian community as a whole and to develop the internal strengths needed for participation in building a better world for all

“Only by working for a just and durable peace can we provide a sense of security and create ample opportunities for growth and prosperity in an atmosphere void of violence and strife. Although remaining political and organizational obstacles hinder the full implementation of programs, Sabeel continues to develop creative means to surmount these challenges. We seek both to be a refuge for dialogue and to pursue ways of finding answers to ongoing theological questions about the sanctity of life, justice, and peace.”

I’ll confess something here: for a while I was strongly—and I do mean strongly—considering attending the Sabeel conference myself, but in the end decided against it—largely because Sabeel’s positions on Israel tend to be a little too conciliatory for my own personal taste. In my view, Israel has basically forfeited its right to exist. This is something I stated in an article I wrote last month after an Israeli court issued its verdict in the Rachel Corrie case. As I put it:

The creation of a Palestinian state—not just in the West Bank and Gaza, but allof Palestine—is the only way forward at this point. The Jewish state’s belligerence has repulsed people around the planet. Continuing to tolerate its disregard for international law will lead to disaster. With the Rachel Corrie verdict the candle flame of its “legitimacy” has finally burned out; Israel has no right to exist.

But this is not the position of Sabeel. Rather than denigrate and “vilify” the interfaith organization, Sokolove and Goldblum should be thankful that relatively moderate groups are still willing to sit down and have a reasonable discussion with them on the issues. Israel has stockpiled nuclear weapons, refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, committed war crimes and atrocities, spied against the US, and waged interminable wars throughout the entire 64 years of its miserable existence. In addition, its lobbyists in America have corrupted not only our Congress but virtually our entire federal government. How would the aforementioned God of justice view such a record? Why, he would of course thoroughly approve! Or at least that’s what Sokolove and Goldblum seem to believe. “Sabeel,” they inform us, “promotes the idea that Zionism is based on a false reading of the Bible and that it stands for injustice and in opposition to God.” Why, what further proof do we need of Sabeel’s ‘anti-Semitism’ than that!? After all, how on earth could Zionists be doing anything other than God’s will?

As I said above, far too many people still tremble in fear when some Zionist or other takes a notion to start cudgeling people with the ‘anti-Semite’ label, and all too often Christians are among the most weak-kneed in this respect. And apparently Jews in New Mexico have been doing a lot of cudgel-swinging lately, particularly at local Christians. In their op-ed piece, Sokolove and Goldblum mention two Christian organizations which “distanced themselves” from the conference, apparently as a result, and they even go so far as to name them: the New Mexico Conference of Churches and the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John.

A September 15 report in the Albuquerque Journal delves into this issue further, informing us that the Cathedral Church of St. John had originally been the site chosen for the conference, and that FOSA organizers had even paid $1,000 to secure rights to hold the event there. However, following a meeting with a local rabbi, what did church leaders do? Pulled out of the deal and refunded the payment, the story says.

Christians who cave into pressure like this are a sad lot. Had Jesus been this cowardly, there would have been no Christian faith to follow.

 For additional resources see:

Friends of Sabeel-North America website

Conference brochure in pdf

Conference schedule

 

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!

Operation Phantasmagoria II: Gaza and Al-Quds, Linked In Blood

Beneath the “mask of Zion,” there is nothing but darkness, evil and crimes against humanity.

by Jonathan Azaziah

Prelude: In Part I, the hasbara behind the March 11th murders on the illegal Zionist settlement of Itamar was thoroughly debunked, absolving Palestinians of all wrongdoing and presenting evidence for Israeli orchestration of the slaying of the Fogel family as well as displaying in detail that Zionism benefitted greatly from the crime. Operation Phantasmagoria now moves to the holy city of al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the besieged ghetto-prison of Gaza, in a convergence of false flags, white phosphorus and innocent blood…

Shadow War Phase II: Bombing In Al-Quds

On March 23rd, a “bomb” rocked a crowded bus stop in Zionist-occupied al-Quds, killing a 60-year old woman and wounding over 30 others; the first of its kind in over 6 years. Though no Palestinian Resistance group claimed responsibility for the attack, the delusional, antagonistic and deeply misleading Zionist media immediately blamed Palestinians. Hundreds of (ultra-racist) ultra-Orthodox Zionist extremists marched on ethnically cleansed land in al-Quds and chanted, “death to the Arabs!” and demanded “retribution,” though, again, there was no evidence that “Arabs” had anything to do with what had taken place (1).

War criminal Netanyahu called for a response of aggression after the false flag in al-Quds.

This fundamentally racist and deep-rooted flaw within Israeli society provided picture-perfect groundwork for Tel Aviv to initiate an assault in subsequence. Talmudically-derived Zionist bloodlust: the buoy that has kept Israel afloat, functioning as a “state” for 63 years. Following this pattern of bloodlust to the letter, mass murdering war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu went on the record to state that the Zionist entity would respond “aggressively, responsibly and wisely to preserve the quiet and security that has prevailed here over the past two years,” and also, “we are very determined to strike at the terrorist elements and deny them the means of attacking our citizens (2).”

Israel is one of the most militarized and security-laden “states” on planet earth, with cameras located even in confiscated religious sites in occupied al-Quds (3). With that said, its expertly-trained and intel-obsessed police in Jerusalem didn’t have a single “terror” alert in the city or any other nearby city for that matter on the day in question (4). Not only did this bomb go off at the very entrance of occupied al-Quds, one of the holy city’s busiest sections, it went off near several government ministries (5), which are perpetually swarming with agents and operatives of Mossad, Shin Bet, IOF and Aman. As was the case with the Itamar killings, it is not only of the loftiest implausibility that Palestinians planted this bomb in al-Quds; it is impossible and quite firm in its blatant impossibility. The Jerusalem bus stop bombing was a Mossad false flag (6), engineered as a key progression in the “Phantasmagoria” project.

Zionist security officials fleetingly attempted to convince the world that the device that shook al-Quds was homemade and weighed a minuscule four pounds (7), but it was nothing of the sort and their pathetic hasbara-ridden narrative crumbled rather quickly. Firstly, the device was remote-controlled (8), solidifying beyond a shadow of a doubt that the device was produced by Israeli intelligence; it is the bonafide signature of Zionism. Mossad and Aman have used remote-controlled explosive devices, most notably IEDs and car bombs, to utterly devastate Iraq and transform it into what it is now: an occupied wasteland. It has become an occupied wasteland largely due to the car bomb warfare inflicted upon it by the Zionist entity (9).

One of the Zionist entity’s favorite weapons: the suitcase bomb.

Secondly, as confirmed by Israeli police and multiple eyewitnesses, the explosive device was delivered in a suitcase (10), another signature that leads straight to Zionism. Israeli intelligence assets have used the suitcase bomb in London during the Hindawi Affair, in Kenya during the operation at the Kikambala Hotel, in multiple operations led by long-hidden Zionist agent Abu Nidal, in peak-level paramilitary ventures and assassinations across the Middle East, in the infamous Lockerbie bombing which has been repeatedly invoked by the Zionist media throughout its coverage on the criminal war now being waged against Libya (11), in Houston during a failed false flag operation at an oil refinery and in the 1993 Bombay terror attacks that have been exposed as a Mossad-RAW operation (12). The suitcase bomb is the very representation of Mossad’s motto, “by way of deception, thou shalt wage war.” It is efficient in its bloodshed, easily deliverable, easily concealed and it is undetectable to those unfamiliar with Mossad’s methods.

The stage had been set. Making good on his promise to “respond aggressively,” Benjamin Netanyahu sent his warplanes, fully paid for by the United States, the Zionist entity’s favorite lapdog, into the besieged Gaza Strip just hours after Mossad’s remote-controlled suitcase bomb detonated in occupied al-Quds. Multiple airstrikes were launched (13), once again bringing terror to 800,000 starving Palestinian children that call Gaza their home. Meanwhile, the Zionist security authorities in Jerusalem claim that they are “hunting down” the perpetrators of the “terror” attack (14). Well. It is certain that they will be “hunting” forever, since they will never look in the offices of the Israeli prime minister, or the offices of the directors of Shin Bet, Aman and Mossad.

March 2011 was a bloody month for besieged Gaza; 16 Palestinians were murdered by Israel.

Besieged Gaza: The March Massacre

Mossad’s false flag in occupied al-Quds was designed to once again generate international sympathy for the Zionist entity which is incessantly (and despicably) barking in its media organizations to portray itself as a victim, and to give credence to any future attack it may launch in illegally besieged Gaza. Multiple world leaders, or, more appropriately titled, stooges of the Israeli apartheid state, condemned the attack, but it was darling of the Zionist Lobby Hillary Clinton that spoke in the most thunderous manner, “Terrorism and the targeting of civilians are never justified. And Israel, like all nations, of course, has to respond when this occurs. The United States is committed to Israel’s security and we strongly condemn this violence and extend our deepest sympathies to all those affected (15).” As usual, Tel Aviv’s terrorism against innocent Palestinians is conveniently left out of the equation.

The usurping entity would like the public to believe that its recent attacks on illegally besieged Gaza began on March 23rd, when the suitcase bomb detonated in occupied al-Quds. This however, like all other scenarios regarding Palestine that are presented in the Zionist-owned mainstream media, is a fallacy; an atrocious fallacy.

The aggression against Gaza, which has been routine since the genocide of Operation Cast Lead, actually began 21 days prior on March 2nd when the Israeli Navy engaged in one of its favorite hobbies, shooting at Palestinian fishing boats. This criminality was followed by IOF tanks and bulldozers invading the southern Strip to demolish farmlands and fire live ammunition on Palestinian families (16). Two days later, Tel Aviv sent its warplanes into the Strip in the early morning hours and targeted a car in An-Nusseirat Refugee Camp, spreading terror amongst men, women and children, but once again no injuries or deaths were reported (17).

Zionist warplanes; function: dropping bombs on Palestinian children.

Two more days passed, and Israel’s terror began anew as Zionist F-16s assaulted the Strip, conducting multiple airstrikes in several Gaza City neighborhoods and Central Gaza. Homes, warehouses, schools and mosques were damaged in the assault, but no Palestinians were hurt or murdered (18). The new attacks came in response to Hamas’ protest of the Zionist entity closing al-Muntar (Karni) Crossing, the main commercial crossing between Gaza and what is now known as “Israel.” The closing of al-Muntar adds another layer to the already inhumane and crippling siege afflicting the people of the Strip (19). Zionism was upset that its additional collective punishment was resisted and not submissively accepted.

The following day, the laundry list of Israeli war crimes against the besieged Strip literally got a little longer as the Zionist entity announced its near completion of the first phase of the illegal electric fence it is building on the Egypt-Gaza border (20). The newest barbed wire monstrosity tightens Israel’s iron grip even more on the suffering Palestinian population of Gaza, and is, by itself, a war crime and a crime against humanity. Tensions were rising exponentially in the Strip as Palestinian truckers started staging mass demonstrations on March 9th against the closure of al-Muntar Crossing and demanding its immediate opening. They were also demanding a response from the Hamas government to the latest Israeli attack on whatever was left of their livelihood (21).

Kidnaped by Mossad: Dirar Abu Sisi, father of 6 and senior engineer in Gaza.

On March 10th, it was revealed that the Zionist regime had abducted 42-year old Dirar Abu Sisi, a Palestinian father of six from besieged Gaza, while he was in the Ukraine inquiring about citizenship in late February (22). Shin Bet, notorious for torturing and fabricating evidence against those who resist Israel’s militarism, tyranny and occupation, has filed an indictment against Abu Sisi, labeling him the “rocket godfather” of Hamas (23).

This, as expected, is a gross lie of monumental proportions and a malicious slander against the 42-year old husband and father, who isn’t a member of Hamas in any way, shape or form. And, also as expected, it is now known that Dirar Abu Sisi has been mercilessly tortured by Shin Bet and he remains imprisoned, in solitary confinement, consistently (and pointlessly) interrogated by agents of Shin Bet and Mossad (24). The real reason behind Abu Sisi’s kidnaping, imprisonment and torture is his job. He’s the senior official at Gaza’s lone power plant and has brilliantly uncovered a way to engineer a switch in the fuel sources of the plant in defiance of the criminal Zionist siege (25). Abu Sisi’s wife Veronica stated clearly that Mossad kidnaped her husband to sabotage his plans and to cripple the plant, therefore crippling the Palestinian people (26). Not even abroad are Palestinians safe from the deadly reach of Zionist intelligence.

March 16th was a day drenched in blood. The Zionist entity began its aggression early in the morning by air, assassinating two fighters from al-Qassam Brigades, 25-year old Ghassan Fathi Abu Omar and 23-year old Adnan Yousef Eshtewy and wounding two others (27). The aggression continued throughout the afternoon with incessant firing from gunboats on Gaza’s fisherman, as several fishing boats were hit and one Palestinian was wounded (28). Palestinians in eastern Gaza City couldn’t even sleep as the bombardment continued in the evening with IOF tanks shelling a cemetery (29).

An uneasy calm prevailed in the Strip for 3 days, minus the everyday buzzing of Zionist drones, and the aggression came to life again as the illegitimate Israeli state heavily bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, March 19th. 5 Palestinians were wounded, including a 3-year old child, when Israeli tank shells struck eastern Gaza City. Missiles from Zionist warplanes struck homes, mosques and tank shells blasted Gaza International Airport. Finally, the Resistance fired homemade shells, that cannot be aimed, that more often than not land in empty desert lands or abandoned areas, and often do not explode, into ethnically cleansed Palestine in retaliation against Israel’s terror raining down upon Gaza’s citizens (30). No Israelis were hurt or killed, and no “residence” incurred any damage.

Imad and Qasem; murdered by Israeli tanks.

Zionist missiles continued to be fired from F-16s and Zionist shells IOF tanks continued to scorch the Strip into Saturday evening, and around 9:30 pm local time in occupied Palestine, Israeli tanks pounded a civilian neighborhood in Johr al-Deek and murdered two Palestinian children. 14-year old Imad Farajullah and 16-year old Qasem Abu Eteiwi died on impact (31). But the Zionist entity’s March Massacre didn’t stop here.

On March 22nd, as a group of Palestinian children were playing soccer (32), the Israeli army tank blasted five artillery shells into the home of Fayiq al-Hilo, and slaughtered four innocent civilians, the youngest of which being 11-year old Muhammad al-Hilo. Ten Palestinians were wounded in the assault, many of them with wounds so serious they needed amputations to save their lives. 19 Palestinians were wounded for the day by multiple IAF airstrikes and non-stop IOF shelling, including 7 children and 2 women (33). Drones entered the frame and fired a plethora of missiles into Gaza City, wounding a fighter from al-Qassam Brigades and the IAF continued its brutal raids, assassinating four Qassam fighters and leaving another brave soul in an intensive care unit. Tuesday’s body count was 9 Palestinians, including 3 children (34). The Zionist entity never ceases to push its cowardice to new peaks; add soccer to Zionism’s list of “existential threats.”

As IOF continued to brutally shell Gaza, Livni demanded more; a Cast Lead-type escalation.

The escalation continued two days later as Zionism targeted a fighter from the Salah ad-Din Brigades and narrowly missed, destroying several buildings in the process. Additional Zionist air raids wounded two more Palestinian civilians in the Beit Lahia district of northern Gaza. The Resistance responded by launching 3 homemade shells at the illegal Karmiya settlement (35). As the casualties continued to rise, and the bodies of Palestinian innocents continued to stack up, what does the “liberal” Zionist war criminal Tzipi Livni do? She calls for more shedding of innocent blood by suggesting that Israel should initiate a second round of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli ethnic cleansing operation that wiped 1,440 Palestinians off of the map, including 431 children (36). This, more so than anything else, fully exemplifies how bloodthirsty Zionism is.

Before the chapter of the March Massacre came to a close however, Zionism destroyed al-Sattar Factory, which produces various sodas for the besieged Gaza citizenry (37), assassinated two fighters from al-Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, in Jabalia, just hours after all of the Resistance factions in Gaza stated (for the umpteenth time) that they will commit to a ceasefire if the Zionist entity stops its mass murder (38), and one day after the family of 11-year old wrestling fan Muhammad al-Hilo mourned their fallen child (39), barbaric Israeli air raids shook the Strip, assassinating another al-Quds fighter and critically wounded another as they made their way to morning prayers (40). Morning prayers have long been on the Zionist list of “existential threats,” as evidenced by the infamous martyring of Hamas founder and Resistance giant Sheikh Ahmed Yassin when IAF launched a missile at him as he was leaving a Gaza City Mosque in his wheelchair after Fajr (41). Ultimately, March saw 16 Palestinians, including children and the elderly, meet their demise at the hands of Israeli occupiers (42).

Zionism’s bombardment of Gaza didn’t end in April; it worsened.

Besieged Gaza: April Atrocities

Still reeling from the brutality inflicted across the Strip in March, the Palestinians of besieged Gaza did not receive a break, did not receive any rest, did not receive any mercy from the Zionist entity in April. Gaza was pounded by the illegitimate Israeli state’s warplanes on April 2nd in a joint operation coordinated by the Zionist military and Shin Bet. Three Palestinians from al-Qassam Brigades were assassinated in the strikes, their bodies badly mutilated due to the sheer force of the blast (43). The 3-day uneasy calm was unhinged when Zionist occupiers gunned down an unarmed Palestinian man in the dreaded “buffer zone,” a strip of land imposed on the Palestinians of Gaza by Israel which the entity uses to shoot Palestinians at will. The Zionist buffer zone has rendered 30% of Gaza’s agricultural land useless (44).

The following day, only hours after hundreds of Palestinian children gathered on al-Saraya Street in the middle of Gaza City to plead with the “international community” for protection against Israel’s aggression (45), the Strip was hammered again. 4 Palestinians were wounded in multiple Zionist air raids, including 2 women, one of whom was pregnant. Homes were destroyed and a plastics factory that provides work to many Palestinians was damaged in the assault (46).

Palestinian children in occupied Gaza asking the world to heed their call for help.

The calls of Gaza’s children fell on dear ears however, as the international community of cowards and hypocrites watched Tel Aviv bomb on. Not even 24 hours after the “heroic” Israeli army targeted a pregnant woman, F-16s ripped through the southern Strip, spreading terror through residential areas and leaving one Palestinian wounded (47). More than a month of murder and mayhem, and the Palestinians of besieged Gaza still had not been hit by Israel’s worst; still had not been hit by Israel’s most brutal; Israel’s most animalistic. What was about to follow would be the most drastic Zionist escalation in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead.

As April 7th swallowed April 6th, dawn passed and the morning rolled forward, the Resistance of Gaza, led by Hamas, responded to the Zionist entity’s assassinations of its fighters and brutalization of its citizenry with multiple mortar shells against an illegal Israeli settlement. The Resistance reported that two illegal Israeli settlers were wounded when one of its shells had struck a bus on a road that is frequented by Zionist occupation forces (48).

Israel’s media however, notoriously known for manufacturing malevolent hasbara and outright lies to justify illegal Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and those who stand with them (49), stated that a 16-year old boy was critically wounded and hospitalized by the Hamas response, additionally adding that the boy was “hysterical” and that the target hit was a school bus, not just a commuter bus. Israeli Defense Minister (and war criminal) Ehud Barak thunderously called for Tel Aviv to carry out a “swift retaliation.”

What is most odd about this particular piece of hasbara is that the Zionist papers reported that the bus was “nearly empty,” and what is even more odd, is that it didn’t quote anyone in the military to substantiate this information like it normally does, instead choosing to ambiguously cite “Israeli sources (50).” Is there any evidence that a 16-year old boy was “critically wounded” by fire from the Gaza Resistance? No, and even if the story has some truth to it, the supremacist (and overall, ridiculous) undertone invalidates its seriousness. The reason for manufacturing this morsel of hasbara? To drop more bombs on the Strip.

Israel unloaded several white phosphorus bombs on Gaza in April.

Ehud Barak’s orders of “swift retaliation” were carried out mercilessly by the IOF war machine in a sustained campaign of bombardment. Over the course of 24 hours, from April 8th at noon to April 9th at noon, 14 Palestinians were slaughtered and dozens of others, mostly women, children and elderly, were badly wounded by Zionist tank shells and air strikes that rocked the Gaza Strip to its very core (51). Paramedics and ambulances were deliberately targeted by IOF (52), a Zionist shell wrecked a water tank in eastern Gaza City, forcing municipality officials to shut down the water pumps to prevent residents from drinking contamination (53), and the Zionist entity once again unleashed internationally banned chemical weapons on Gaza (54), including the dreaded white phosphorus (55).

The usurping regime’s brutality continued despite the Resistance unequivocally calling for a ceasefire, again (56), and by the time the killing was over, 19 Palestinians had been martyred, including women, elderly and children, and more than 60 were wounded (57). IOF’s assault was as tragic as it was barbarous. 21-year old Nidal Qdeih, who was murdered alongside her 45-year old mother Najah when a Zionist missile struck their home in al-Faraheen, was preparing for her wedding the following week (58). This is Zionism’s foundational essence: destruction of lives, destruction of families, destruction of love, compassion and humanity; spreading fear wherever it finds an opening.

The Zionist entity would launch mock air raids over the Strip just a few days after the massacre (59), to humiliate Hamas and the other Resistance factions and to remind Gaza’s population that another stream of devastation could happen at any moment. The everyday violations of Gaza’s dignity would succeed the mock raids, with Israeli forces firing on fishermen, shooting at homes and destroying agricultural land (60), solidifying that Palestinian life in the largest open air prison on earth had returned from “in hell” to the status quo of besieged.

The Hamas-Fatah “unity” deal is a sham.

Conclusion: The Crippling of Hamas

On April 27th, 2011, an event took place that took all analysts from the side of the oppressed and the side of the oppressor, solidarity activists and average observers by surprise; gargantuan surprise. Hamas, the Islamic Resistance of Gaza, had agreed to a “reconciliation” deal with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), a collaborationist entity thoroughly dominated by Fatah. The basis of this deal was a new “unity” government (61). Right as the shock began to wear off and the abyssal skepticism of the deal even coming to fruition started to set in, another gargantuan surprise emerged: the Resistance and the collaborators actually signed the deal (62). Though many questions about this deal were immediately asked, there was only one question that had any meaning, any significance: would this new “unity” government collaborate with Tel Aviv as the PA has for years and years now (63)?

Saeb Erekat: collaborator extraordinaire and vile traitor to Palestine.

Israeli occupation forces issued an answer to the question soon enough, with a senior official calling the unity deal “fiction.” The official would also state that, “the security officers I have spoken to over the past week have said that it changes nothing for them. It is business as usual for the Palestinian Authority’s security forces (64).” Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief “negotiator” for the peace process sham, confirmed the Israeli official’s observations, commenting in no uncertain terms, “Security coordination with the Israelis and defining the meaning of security coordination, in accordance with the agreements, they will continue (65).” The Zionist entity is officially at war with Hamas, and vice versa, so how can Hamas partake in the everyday affairs of a government that, by aforementioned PA and IOF admission, it is at war with?

A future piece in this series will deal with this issue as well as the fraudulence of the “reconciliation” deal in rigorous detail. At the moment though, another question, in relation to this piece, is much more pressing and relevant. What would cause Hamas, a Resistance organization by design, definition and action, to bow down to the dominion of the entity it refused to ever recognize and sign a deal with its armed wing of collaborators and traitors? The PA has blocked Israeli releases of Palestinian prisoners, formed backstage committees to block real unity at every angle, murdered Palestinian innocents and boasted about it to its American paymasters and accepted billions of dollars from the Zionist-occupied regimes in the US and EU (66), how can Hamas “unify” with these thugs?

It is the opinion of this writer that Hamas did not do so on its own free volition, but that it did so after being broken down by the Zionist entity. It is the only explanation for such a lapse in dignity and principle from an organization that swept the 2006 elections in the besieged Gaza Strip because their commitment to resisting Israeli occupation was genuine (67). Led by Zionist war criminal Elliot Abrams, the Bush administration attempted to stage a coup d’etat by funding what was essentially a Palestinian mercenary faction led by PA official Muhammad Dahlan. The plan was to wipe out the Islamic Resistance once and for all and re-install Fatah as the controlling faction in the Strip. However, the plan failed miserably, and with Hamas’ survival, it gained greater respect in the eyes of the people, despite the bloody 5-day civil war that ensued (68).

But with the ever-tightening all-out siege imposed on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza bearing down on its proverbial neck, Hamas seemed to weaken a little more everyday, despite public showings of strength and solidarity. Israel’s genocidal Operation Cast Lead was the penultimate shot before the knockout, and every one of the 1,440 Palestinians murdered undoubtedly haunted the Hamas leadership on a daily basis. Their sacrifices, the 431 children in particular, undoubtedly continue to do so. Hence why Resistance leader Khaled Mish’al attempted to “legitimize” Hamas’ ambitions and positions in the eyes of the pathetic “international community” after Cast Lead (69).

Simultaneously, it continued with its Resistance, but despite its best efforts to repel Zionism’s aggression, Hamas has been unable to end its people’s suffering, unable to end the siege, unable to defeat the occupation. And with the PA pushing towards a September date for the UN to recognize a Palestinian state (70), which is really nothing more than a carved-up Zionist-controlled Palestinian bantustan, it is seemingly clear that Tel Aviv gambled by trying to back Hamas into a corner and the gamble paid off.

Victim of Israel’s aggression against Gaza in April.

The nonstop and murderous Israeli aggression against Gaza that began in early March and didn’t end until mid-April was the knockout blow. The Zionist regime used its false flag attack in occupied al-Quds to link the two Palestinian ghettos in blood and prepare them for the international legitimacy of Israel’s apartheid and occupation in September. This is the essence of Operation Phantasmagoria; putting a “mask of Zion” on oppression, dispossession, humiliation and murder to make it look like hope and progress. Like all Resistance movements, Hamas must make a decision that will not only determine its own fate, but the fate of the people it is resisting for. It must choose between resisting until liberation or succumbing to the pressure of the oppressor and submitting to subjugation. Unfortunately, this “unity” deal seems to have led Hamas down the road of the latter. For occupied Palestine’s sake, let’s hope, that what seems, is wrong.
~ The End ~

Operation Phantasmagoria I

Next: The horrific assassination of activist, actor and director Juliano Mer-Khamis and what it means for the future of occupied Palestine….

Sources:

(1) Jerusalem Bus Bomb Kills One And Injures 30 by Adrian Blomfield, The Telegraph

(2) Israel Warns Of “Aggressive Response” To Jerusalem Blast by Conal Urquhart and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

(3) Security Cameras Lead To Shabbat Desecration? by Ari Galahar, Ynet

(4) Woman Killed, Dozens Injured In Jerusalem Bombing by Melanie Lidman and Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post

(5) Jerusalem’s Fragile Peace Destroyed By Suitcase Bomb by Conal Urquhart and Phoebe Greenwood, The Guardian

(6) Terror Attack In Jerusalem, Counter To Fatah-Hamas Unity by Feroze Mithiborwala, Counter Currents

(7) Mystery Deepens Over Deadly Jerusalem Bus Bomb by Karl Vick and Aaron J. Klein, TIME Magazine

(8) Deadly Jerusalem Bus Bomb Possibly Remote Controlled by Richard Esposito and Lee Ferran, ABC News

(9) Occupied Iraq: New Year, Same Zionism by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(10) Deadly Bombing Targets Jerusalem Bus Stop by Wyre Davies, BBC

(11) Libya: The Zionist Dragon And The Drums Of War by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(12) 26/11: Mossad Terrorizes Mumbai by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(13) Israeli Jets Strike Gaza: 23 March 2011 by Al Jazeera English

(14) Jerusalem Bus Bombing Kills 1, Injures 30 by Anne Barker, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

(15) Bombing In Jerusalem: Press Statement – Hillary Rodham Clinton by US Department of State

(16) Israeli Navy Fires At Palestinian Fishing Boats by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(17) Israeli Air Force Bombards A Car In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(18) Israeli Air Force Carries Out A Series Of Air Strikes In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(19) Palestinian Government In Gaza Protests Closure Of Main Commercial Crossing Into Israel by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(20) Israel Constructs Electric Fence On Egypt Border by Jeany Massad, IMEMC

(21) Gaza Truckers Protest Israel’s Closure Of Commercial Crossing by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada

(22) UN Official: Israel Kidnaped Palestinian Engineer From Ukraine by Haaretz

(23) Shin Bet Files Indictment Against ‘Rocket Godfather’ by Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post

(24) Israel, Extraordinary Rendition And The Strange Case Of Dirar Abu Sisi by Richard Silverstein, Truth Out

(25) Gaza Engineer Sent To Solitary by Ma’an News Agency

(26) Dirar Abu Sisi, Palestinian In Ukraine, Allegedly Abducted By Israel by Maria Danilova and Diaa Hadid, The Huffington Post

(27) Two Qassam Martyrs In Israeli Airstrike On Gaza by Al-Qassam Information Office; Two Palestinians Killed As Army Bombards Gaza Village by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(28) Fisherman Wounded By Israeli Navy Fire by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(29) Army Bombards Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(30) Five Palestinians Wounded In Israeli Air Strikes In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC; Israeli Artillery Shelling On Gaza Strip by Al-Qassam Information Office

(31) Killing Children In Gaza Is Israeli War Crime by Al-Qassam Information Office

(32) Israel Kills 8 Gazans In Day Of Strikes by Ma’an News Agency

(33) Resident Wounded As Army Bombards Gaza, 19 Wounded Tuesday by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(34) Nine Palestinians, Including Three Children, Killed By Army Fire In Gaza On Tuesday by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(35) Two Civilians Wounded In New Israeli Air Raids On Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center

(36) IDF: Assassination Of Hamas Leaders Possible by Yoav Zitun, Ynet

(37) Israeli Artillery Shell Blasts Factory In Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center

(38) Two Fighters Assassinated In Gaza, One Resident Injured by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(39) Gaza Family Mourns Boy Killed By Israeli Shell by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada

(40) A Palestinian Man Killed, Another Badly Injured In Brutal Air Raid On Rafah Area by The Palestinian Information Center

(41) Hamas Founder Killed In Israeli Airstrike by CNN

(42) 16 Palestinians Killed By Israel Last Month by The Palestinian Information Center

(43) Three Fighters Assassinated In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(44) Palestinian Killed In Gaza Buffer Zone by Circarre Parrhesia, IMEMC

(45) Palestinian Children Demand International Protection by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(46) Army Bombards Gaza, Four Palestinians Injured by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(47) Army Bombards Gaza, One Resident Wounded by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(48) Resistance Hit Back, Injures Two Israeli Settlers by Al-Qassam Information Office; “Israeli Army Strikes Gaza After School Bus Hit” – Deconstructed by Associated Press Deconstructed

(49) Israel Hasbara Fails Again: Photos Show Mavi Marmara Passengers Protecting, Aiding Israeli Soldiers by Ali Abunimah

(50) Two Israelis Hurt In A Mortar Attack In Souther Israel by IMEMC

(51) 14 Killed In Gaza, Dozens Injured In Series Of Strikes by Ma’an News Agency

(52) Five Palestinians Killed, 40 Injured By Israeli Missiles In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(53) Municipality: Israel Shelled Drinking Water Tank In Gaza City by The Palestinian Information Center

(54) Health Minister: Internationally Banned Weapons Used In Israeli Aggression by The Palestinian Information Center

(55) The IOF Used White Phosphorus In Its Latest Aggression by The Palestinian Information Center

(56) Palestinian Factions In Gaza Declare Ceasefire by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC

(57) Palestinians Say 19 Killed In Weekend Of IDF Strikes On Gaza by Anshel Pfeffer, Jack Khoury, Amos Harel, Barak Ravid and Yanir Yagna, Haaretz

(58) Woman Killed In Gaza Strike Was Anticipating Wedding by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada

(59) Israeli Warplanes Launch Mock Raids On Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center

(60) IOF Opens Fire At Gaza Border Areas by The Palestinian Information Center

(61) Fatah and Hamas Agree To Historic Palestinian Reconciliation Deal by Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz

(62) Palestinian Rivals Hamas And Fatah Sign Reconciliation Deal by The Guardian

(63) Wikileaks Is Zionist Poison II: Deconstruction Of The Myth by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion

(64) Is The Fatah-Hamas Deal A Disaster? by Anshel Pfeffer, The Jewish Chronicle

(65) Hamas-Backed “Unity Government” To Cooperate With Israel Army, Erekat Says by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

(66) Hollow ‘Reconciliation’ In Palestine by Ali Abunimah, Al-Jazeera English

(67) Hamas Sweeps Palestinian Elections, Complicating Peace Efforts In Mideast by Scott Wilson, The Washington Post

(68) The Gaza Bombshell by David Rose, Vanity Fair

(69) Hamas’ Choice: Recognition Or Resistance In The Age Of Obama by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada

(70) In Israel, Time For Peace Offer May Run Out by Ethan Bronner, The New York Times

Posted by Mask Of Zion at 1:37 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Forensic reports show white phosphorus use in Gaza attacks

[ 18/04/2011 – 01:33 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– Ihab Kahil, who was appointed director of the Gaza Ministry of Justice forensic medicine department, said the bodies retrieved in Israel’s recent attack on the Gaza Strip have been examined to identify the weapons used in the onslaught.

”We are preparing appropriate medical reports, because the crimes committed by Israel should not blur the realities. Everyone must know what crimes Israel has committed,” Kahil said in a press statement on Monday.

He said the forensics department has been in constant contact with the Gaza war crimes documentation committee and human rights organizations with the ultimate goal of helping take Israel to trial for war crimes against the unarmed Palestinians.

The department has been working in cooperation with the documentation committee to bring many massacres to light, especially those where internationally banned weapons were used. Several photographs and other pieces of evidence have been compiled and will be submitted in reports to human rights organizations, courts and other official channels, Kahil said.

He said that during the recent Israeli escalation, forensic science crews have been working round the colock because there is only one forensic medicine center in the Gaza Strip. He went on to describe some of the evidence that has been passed on to the forensics team as chilling, as the body parts of some children have been torn and charred, while some of the bodies were mutilated and decapitated beyond recognition.

”During examinations, evidence has been found that Israel used white phosphorus and internationally banned weapons,” Kahil concluded.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Now Israel Is Free to Declare Its Innocence before the International Court of Justice

April 15, 2011 posted by Prof. William A. Cook

WHITE PHOSPHOROUS RAINS DOWN ON GAZA CITY

United States Congress has once again jumped to the fore as defender of the beleaguered state of Israel by writing a letter to the UNHRC

Let us present this case as objectively as we can… A few photos of Israeli use of white phosphorus will accompany this article if possible.

William A. Cook / STAFF WRITER

Thank God Judge Goldstone recanted his judgment on Israel and its IDF forces in the slaughter inflicted on Gaza during its Christmas invasion in 2008-2009; both are now innocent of wrongful intent to kill Palestinian civilians since the Israeli military courts investigated Goldstone’s allegations and determined he was wrong. Now the good Judge has found, with the military court, that the Israeli government, that refused to cooperate with the United Nations investigation, did not intentionally send its forces to kill and destroy but only to kill and destroy Gaza; that the civilians were killed is simply a sad consequence of war. How astute, how learned, how compassionate; how absurd, how facetious, how despicable.

Yet, good may come of this decision. Now Israel is free to declare its innocence before the International Court of Justice since it is Israel’s investigation that can be presented as its case, with the good Judge as co-defendant. After all, isn’t this exactly what the Israeli government has wanted from the start, a way to demonstrate to the world that its Army is the most moral on the planet, its government the most democratic, acting only to defend its people, its weaponry the most sophisticated state of the art precision ordinance available, and its actions always proportionate to the crimes it seeks to address? Knowing now what they did not know before Judge Goldstone recanted his report, the government of Israel has nothing to fear from the ICJ but the justice it so rightfully deserves. Certainly it makes no sense for Israel or the UN to do nothing now that the report has been brought into question. The world has castigated Israel because of the report, now it’s Israel’s turn to seek revenge and put before the world how righteous and how legal its actions have been. How fortunate this turn of events.

And how opportune a moment since our United States Congress has once again jumped to the fore as defender of the beleaguered state of Israel by writing a letter to the UNHRC that it should expunge the report from history since it is biased against the Jewish state and this would help make amends. (“Congressional initiatives targeting Goldstone report” April 11, 2011 JTA) But why expunge it? Israel, after all, knows it did no wrong; it has done its own investigation and declared its innocence. What an opportunity to show the world that it has been maligned, that it has obeyed all international laws relative to individual rights, that as an occupying force under Geneva Conventions and the Charter of the UN it has observed all requisite responsibilities toward the people of Gaza, and finally that it had rights to invade that the international community must recognize since it was only defending itself.

Let us present this case as objectively as we can by using the words in the Israeli Gaza Operation Investigations: the means used to investigate, the difficulties that impeded the investigation, their presentation of the investigation concerning white phosphorus, and the conclusions drawn by the Military Advocate General, oh, and the convictions leveled on those found guilty. We’ll follow that presentation with some eye witness accounts of the Gaza operation, the effect of white phosphorus and its legality, and the impact of DIME explosives on humans and the environment. A few photos of Israeli use of white phosphorus will accompany this article if possible.

Consider the facts as articulated by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as it labeled Cast Lead as Hamas war against Israel.

Israeli soldier looks impatient as he watches over a load of bombs destined to be fired at Gaza[My apologies; I’m interjecting a subjective comment on Israel’s calling Operation Cast Lead “Hamas’ war against Israel.” In the 8 years preceding Cast Lead, Hamas or other resistance groups in Gaza, fired 6000 home made rockets at Israel, roughly 750 a year, or 62.5 per month or 2 per day. Twenty three people were killed. In that same period Israel killed more than 1000 Palestinian children and in Cast Lead killed an additional 352. A total of 1084 Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2008, but 6430 Palestinians were killed. Yet it was Hamas’ war against Israel. One final observation: Israel’s launch of one of its American supplied missiles that cost $300,000, a fraction of the 8.2 million per day we supply to Israel’s military, a precision state of the art weapon that hit a home where the IDF ordered people to go, in less than one minute killed 21 members of the Samouni family, nine of them children.] (figures from ifamericansknew.org and see this author’s article “Consider the Realities of Gaza,” Counterpunch, Jan. 5, 2009). Back to our sources and let the reader be judge.

Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update Jan 2010.

Israeli Defence Forces fire massive weapons of destruction toward the population of Gaza

1. Israel’s investigative system has multiple layers of review to ensure impartiality and independence. These include the Military Advocate General’s Corps (MAG), which determines whether to initiate criminal investigations and file charges against IDF soldiers. The Military Advocate General is legally independent from the military chain of command. Israel’s Attorney General provides civilian oversight, as any decision of the Military Advocate General on whether or not to investigate or indict may be subject to his review.

2. The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects, which addressed a range of factual and legal issues related to the Gaza Operation. The Operation in Gaza also set out the legal framework governing the use of force and the principles – including the principles of distinction and proportionality – that apply in such a conflict. It also described the IDF’s efforts to ensure compliance with these principles during the Gaza Operation and the modus operandi of Hamas, in particular its abuses of civilian protections that created such acute operational dilemmas.

3. Describing the application of these mechanisms to the Gaza Operation, the Paper notes that the IDF to date has launched investigations of 150 separate incidents arising from the Gaza Operation. A number of these were opened at the IDF’s own initiative. Others were opened in response to complaints and reports from Palestinian civilians, local and international non-governmental organisations, and U.N. and media reports.

Conclusions:

183. The Gaza Operation presented complex challenges to Israel and the IDF. While the need and obligation to respond effectively to the thousands of Hamas rockets and mortars that had terrorized Israeli civilians for years was clear and acute, the strategies adopted by Hamas, and in particular its systematic entrenchment in the heart of civilian areas, created profound operational dilemmas. [A second interruption if I may: consider the reality of the Palestinians’ plight; they can go nowhere, they cannot escape through the Israeli gates, they can not flee by car, rail, air, boat or on foot, and they are caged in a steel enclosed land area blocked on the west by Israeli gunboats. They have no army, no air force, no navy; but they were training police to help provide order inside this cage of chaos, and Israel began its operation by killing 50 of the graduating class on December 27, 2008.]

Palestinian doctors carry the bodies of children killed by an Israeli tank shell, to the morgue at Shifa hospital in Gaza (images: documents.blogspot.com)

184. These challenges did not end with the close of operations. A key element of respecting the Law of Armed Conflict is a commitment genuinely to review military operations after the fact, and thoroughly investigate allegations of unlawful activity. Fulfilling this commitment in the context of Gaza is demanding, and requires serious efforts to obtain evidence from battleground situations and to make arrangements to enable residents of Gaza to give their accounts. It also requires an awareness that, in complex combat situations, errors of judgment, even with tragic results, do not necessarily mean that violations of the Law of Armed Conflict have occurred. [Note that Israel refused to cooperate with the UNHRC investigation that became the Goldstone Report.]

187. Israel recognizes the importance of engaging in dialogue and sharing best practices on theconduct of investigative proceedings with other democratic states facingsimilar challenges and committed to upholding the rule of law.

Obviously this article cannot provide a complete rendering of the Israeli investigation and its conclusions regarding proper conduct under international law. However, one of the more telling concerns raised about the IDF was its use of white phosphorus. Here is the comment from the Israeli operation cast lead investigation on that subject. Section IV contains others.

IV. COMPLAINTS ALLEGING VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW
OF ARMED CONFLICT DURING THE GAZA OPERATION

89. Israel is aware of concerns raised regarding the Gaza Operation. As discussed in detail in The Operation in Gaza, and as outlined above, the deliberate strategy of Hamas to blend in with the civilian population made it difficult for the IDF to achieve the objective of the Gaza Operation – reducing the threat of deliberate attacks against Israeli civilians – while also avoiding harm to Palestinian civilians. To be sure, the IDF undertook strenuous efforts to minimise such harm. It intensively trained its personnel on the requirements of the Law of Armed Conflict. It delayed, diverted, or refrained from attacks to spare civilian life. It provided numerous and varied types of concrete warnings before launching attacks.

88 Nevertheless, Israel’s efforts to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict do not lessen its regret for the loss of innocent lives and damage to civilian property.

93. The unique difficulties involved in the investigation of alleged violations of the Law of Armed Conflict in the battlefield should not be ignored. They include: the inability to secure the scene for forensic and physical evidence, either during a battle or after, when the territory is under enemy control; the possible destruction of evidence during fighting and the possible  manipulation of the scene by the enemy; the need to recall reserve soldiers back for questioning; the difficulty of accurately identifying the location of an incident, when it is described in local and unofficial terms and slang; and the need to locate the adversary’s civilians as witnesses and overcome their natural suspicion and fear of reprisals by their authorities.

90(v) The use of weaponry containing phosphorous

117. This investigation dealt with the use of weapons containing phosphorous by IDF forces during the Gaza Operation. The investigation focused on the different types and number of weapons containing phosphorous used during the Operation, the purposes for which they were used, the applicable professional instructions and rules of engagement, and the extent of compliance with those instructions and rules. Some of the findings of the special command investigation are detailed in The Operation in Gaza.107

118. The Military Advocate General reviewed the entire record of the special command investigation. With respect to exploding munitions containing white phosphorous, the Military Advocate General concluded that the use of this weapon in the operation was consistent with Israel’s obligations under international law.

119. With respect to smoke projectiles, the Military Advocate General found that international law does not prohibit use of smoke projectiles containing phosphorous. Specifically, such projectiles are not “incendiary weapons,” within the meaning of the Protocol on 106 Id. ¶¶ 436-45. Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons,108 because they are not primarily designed to set fire or to burn. The Military Advocate General further determined that during the Gaza Operation, the IDF used such smoke projectiles for military purposes only, for instance to camouflage IDF armor forces from Hamas’s antitank units by creating smoke screens.

120. The Military Advocate General found no grounds to take disciplinary or other measures for the IDF’s use of weapons containing phosphorous, which involved no violation of the Law of Armed Conflict. Nevertheless, the Military Advocate General’s opinion did not address a number of specific complaints that were received after the investigation concluded and which are being investigated separately.(vi)

Palestinians were burned alive with illegal weapons during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

Based on information from B’Tselem and Euromedrights.org, the determinations by the Israeli investigation resulted in the following charges: “In the over two years since Operation Cast Lead, Israel and the Palestinian side have failed to conduct genuine investigations, and where appropriate, prosecutions. To-date one Israeli soldier has served 7.5 months in jail for the theft of a credit card and two others have received three month suspended sentences for using a Palestinian child as a human shield. These three convictions, and the ongoing trial of a fourth soldier, have been the only concrete judicial outcomes of Israeli Operation Cast Lead investigations. It is noted that neither these indictments nor the sentences handed down for the human shield conviction reflect the gravity of the actual crimes committed. It appears that the majority of other investigative procedures have been closed without charge. All alleged international crimes must be subject to genuine investigation, and, if appropriate, those responsible must be prosecuted in accordance with the requirements of international law. In light of the domestic authorities’ failure to conduct such investigation, the International Criminal Court now constitutes the most appropriate forum, as recommended by the Human Rights Council on 25 March.(Euromedrights.org)

To date, no independent investigation apparatus, empowered also to investigate the responsibility of the political and military decision-makers, has been established. According to the report that the Foreign Ministry provided to the UN in July 2010, the Judge Advocate General’s office ordered 47 Military Police investigations with respect to Operation Cast Lead. B’Tselem is aware of 20 Military Police investigations of incidents in which a suspicion arose that soldiers in the field violated army regulations. Four soldiers have been prosecuted for three incidents that occurred during the operation. In the first case, a soldier was convicted of stealing a credit card and sentenced to seven and a half months’ imprisonment, a conditional sentence of seven and a half months, and demotion from sergeant to private. In the second case, indictments were filed against two soldiers alleging they used a nine-year-old child as a human shield, ordering him to open suspected booby-trapped bags. The two soldiers were convicted and sentenced to a three-month suspended jail sentence and demotion in rank from staff sergeant to private. In the third case, an indictment was filed against a soldier for killing an anonymous person and conduct unbecoming a soldier. In three other cases, disciplinary proceedings were instituted against six officers. B’Tselem is aware of at least six cases in which the Attorney General decided not to indict the soldiers. (B’Tselem).

Now let us return to the arguments for a UN investigation that can provide the people of the world with deliberations that place the Israeli Operation Cast Lead before an International Court of Justice.

Phosphorous Bomb Rain Over Northern Gaza

Hiyam Noir, in Palestine Free Voice, January 13, 2009, reporting from Gaza observed “Blankets of white clouds covered the skies over Gaza, including the refuge camps in Khan Younis, Beit Lahia and Gaza City.  On Saturday Israeli F16 warplanes launched attacks using phosphorus bombs on the Block 2 section inside the densely populated Jabalya Refuge Camp. Many residents of Jabalya escaped the area covering their faces, searching for a safe shelter in the home of relatives and friends in the neighboring Beit Lahia from the Israelis “Cast Lead Operation”. Gaza has always been the Israelis “testing ground” – from nerve agents used in Khan Younis in 2003, to Sonic Boom “phantom air raids”, and the use of DIME in the Israelis massacre called ” Operation Summer Rain” over Gaza year 2006.”

In that same article, Noir notes, The Human Rights Watch senior analyst Marc Garlasco said in an interview on France Chanel 4 TV that ..”Israeli artillery bursted fire of white phosphorous shells over Gaza City.”Garlasco said ..”I have been standing at the border for the last few days ,watching Israeli artillery firing white phosphorus shells into refugee camps”.

Press TV on 4 March 2011 reported that cancer cases in Gaza had increased by 30 per cent, and that there was a link between the occurrence of the disease and residence in areas that had been badly hit by Israeli bombing. Zekra Ajour from the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights told the channel that Gaza had been a testing ground for illegal weapons.

In a separate article, Richard Lightbown argues that Israel’s use of white phosphorus and other toxic metals, and its suspected use of depleted uranium, in the war against the people of the Gaza Strip has put the whole of the Strip’s population and its environment – air, soil, groundwater and possibly seawater – at risk of serious long-term injury and contamination. He also observes that The goldstone report mentions phosphorus in paragraph 896: Medical staff reported to the mission how even working in the areas where the phosphorus had been used made them feel sick, their lips would swell and they would become extremely thirsty and nauseous.

The toxicity of phosphorus is also recorded in a report by New York medical staff:⁴

‘Oral ingestion of white phosphorus in humans has been demonstrated to result in pathologic changes to the liver and kidneys. The ingestion of a small quantity of white phosphorus can cause gastrointestinal complaints such as nausea, abdominal cramps, and vomiting. Individuals with a history of oral ingestion have been noted to pass phosphorus-laden stool (“smoking stool syndrome”). The accepted lethal dose is 1 mg/kg, although the ingestion of as little as 15 mg has resulted in death.’

Although an Israeli army spokesman told CNN on 7 January 2009, “I can tell you with certainty that white phosphorus is absolutely not being used.” the chemical had been used by Israeli forces since the beginning of the war.¹² The Goldstone Report stated that Israeli sources later claimed their forces had stopped using white phosphorous on 7 January 2009 because of international concerns. This was also untrue as there is evidence that it had been used after that date. Goldstone declared the Israeli armed forces to have been “systematically reckless” in using white phosphorous in built-up areas (paragraphs 884, 886 and 890).
Lightbown also discusses DIME: “Evidence of the use of depleted uranium against Gaza is tenuous and Goldstone merely recorded in paragraph 907 that it had received allegations which it had not further investigated. Much of this evidence came from Action des citoyens pour le désarmement nucléaire (ACDN: Citizens Action for Nuclear Disarmament). Their report of July 2009 hypothesizes that the GBU-39 bunker-buster bomb is packed with 75 kilogram of depleted uranium. (A UNEP report also ambiguously refers to bunker-buster bombs containing depleted uranium.) The US delivery of 1,000 of these bombs to Israel arrived in early December 2008 shortly before the start of the war. The GBU-39 is considered one of the world’s most precise bombs and Boeing, the manufacturer, claims that the bomb will penetrate three feet of steel-reinforced concrete. (UNEP suggests that it can penetrate reinforced concrete to depths ranging from 1.8 to over 6 metres.) Boeing’s patent on the weapon mentions depleted uranium.⁶

It is not known how many bunker-buster bombs were used against Gaza but it seems reasonable to assume that the number could run into hundreds. It is thought that they were used mostly in the Philadelphia corridor against the tunnels. Desmond Travers, the former Irish army officer who was a member of the Goldstone Commission, would only say that depleted uranium may have been used during the war, although he did agree that it would have been well suited for attacking the tunnels where maximum penetration would have been desired.⁷ He was also in agreement with ACDN that the use of below-ground targets would have considerably reduced the levels of aerosol uranium that was dispersed into the air.

In April 2009 Jean-François Fechino from ACDN was part of a four-person team which went to Gaza for the Arab Commission for Human Rights. Samples that the team brought back were analysed by a specialist laboratory which identified carcinogens: depleted uranium, caesium, asbestos dust, tungsten and aluminium oxide. Thorium oxide was also found, which is radioactive, as are depleted uranium and caesium. The analysis also identified phosphates and copper, along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are a health hazard, especially to children, asthmatics and elders.⁹

Depleted uranium burns at almost 1200 degrees Celsius. (TNT by comparison burns at 576 degrees Celsius.) ¹⁰ At this temperature the fire vaporizes any metals in the target which in combination with uranium are released into the air in aerosol form. After deposition the aerosols have the potential to contaminate groundwater. (The Gaza aquifer, which is the Strip’s only water source, is also connected to ground water supplies in Egypt, although water only flows into Gaza from Israel.¹¹)

The Goldstone Commission was unable to confirm that DIME munitions were used by Israeli forces during Operation Cast Lead. Col Lane had told the commission in testimony that there was no actual proof. He then went on to testify that he had been given samples in Gaza which analysis in Dublin had shown to contain DIME materials consisting mostly of tungsten with traces of iron and sulphur. He was of the opinion that ordnance had been used that had some sort of DIME component. He also mentioned that he had read of unusual amputations, and that tungsten and cobalt would have this effect. Weaponry had been found with DIME components which was capable of amputation and there are Palestinian amputees, yet neither Col Lane nor the commission was prepared to say that DIME weapons had been used by Israeli forces.

DIME bombs cause a high proportion of amputations particularly of legs, while patients often suffered internal burns as well. The bombs consist of powdered tungsten alloy mixed with an explosive material inside a casing which disintegrates on explosion. The tungsten powder tears apart anything it hits including soft tissue and bone, causing very severe injuries. Tungsten alloy particles, described as “finely powdered micro-shrapnel”, are too small to be extracted from the victim’s body and are highly carcinogenic. (Goldstone, paragraphs 902-4)

The whole Gaza population and their environment, including generations yet to be conceived, have been put at risk of serious long-term injury from heavy metal pollution of the air, soil and groundwater (and possibly the seawater too), while the causal pollution is likely to cross state borders into Egypt and even into Israel. Reassurances of the legitimate and responsible use and the reduced lethality of weapons (an opinion in part shared by Col Lane) are callous and inadequate in the context of the dangerous reality that has resulted. Meanwhile, the impacts of Israel’s illegal assaults on Gaza remain ignored and its deeds uncensored by the wider international community.”

Certainly it makes good sense to have the Israeli investigation brought before the ICJ. What possible reason exists not to do this, from either the Israeli perspective or the UNHRC. The perspectives presented above demonstrate the necessity; truth requires it, justice demands it, and the dead cry out for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Prof. William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Read Full Bio

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PROFOUND INTERVIEW IDF ‘OPERATION CAST LEAD’

NOTE: The footnotes below are from Lightbown’s article which can be accessed at
www.redress.cc/palestine/lightbown200110314.

I would also note that the pictures that accompany or may accompany this article are from Dr. Arthur Billy’s Memorial to the People of Gaza available at You tube or as contained in an article titled “What does it profit a congressman to retain his office but suffer the loss of his soul?” A google search will give you access.

Notes

1. Kawther Salam, 29 December 2009; Abortions, Cancer, Diseases and… in Gaza; Intifada-Palestine. www.intifada-palestine.com/2009/12/abortions-cancer-diseases-and-in-gaza/
2. BBCNews, 4 March 2010; Falluja Doctors Report Rise in Birth Defects. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8548707.stm
3. Rita Hindin, Doug Brugge and Bindu Panikkar; Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective; Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2005, 4:17 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-4-17. www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17
4. Lisandro Irizarry, Mollie V Williams, Geri M Williams and José Eric Díaz-Alcalá, 21 October 2009; CBRNE – Incendiary Agents, White Phosphorus. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/833585-overview
5. UNEP, 2007; Lebanon Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment, p 149.
6. ACDN, 4 July 2009; Report on the Use of Radioactive Weapons in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead.  www.newweapons.org/files/ACDN%20Gaza%20report%20updated%204Jul2009%201.pdf
7. Dr Hana Chehata, 9 March 2010; Disturbing Findings of Toxic Uranium Levels in Gaza; Middle East Monitor. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6cdf55k
8. Video accessed from http://blog.unwatch.org/?p=413
9. Palestinian Telegraph, 24 May 2009; Israel Used Depleted Uranium in Offensive on Gaza. www.paltelegraph.com/opinions/editorials/935-israel-used-depleted-uranium-in-offensive-on-gaza.html
10. Sister Rosalie Bertell; Depleted Uranium in the Human Body: Sr Rosalie Bertell, PhD.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQ79-oDX2o
11.  www.standwithus.com/FLYERS/WaterFlyer.pdf
12. Human Rights Watch, 10 January 2009; Q & A on Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza. www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/10/q-israel-s-use-white-phosphorus-gaza
13. http://tinyurl.com/287wxo9
14. Sobhi Skaik, Nafiz Abu-Shaban, Nasser Abu-Shaban, Mario Barbieri, Maurizio Barbieri, Umberto Giani, Paola Manduca, 31 July 2010; Metals Detected by ICP/MS in Wound Tissue of War Injuries Without Fragments in Gaza.  www.newweapons.org/files/1860524319368107_article.pdf
15. NWRC, 17 December 2009; Gaza Strip, soil has been contaminated due to bombings: population in danger.  www.newweapons.org/files/pressrelease_nwrc_20091216_eng.pdf
16. NWRC, 17 March 2010; Metals Detected in Palestinian Children’s Hair Suggest Environmental Contamination. http://www.newweapons.org/?q=node/112
17. James Brooks, 6 December 2006; US and Israel Targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet Another Genotoxic Weapon, Part II. Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural Understanding. http://tinyurl.com/6kq6sd9
18. John F. Kalinich, et al, 15 February 2005; Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomysoarcomas in F344 Rats; ehponline.org  www.afrri.usuhs.mil/www/outreach/pdf/tungsten_cancer.pdf
19. James Brooks, 5 December 2006; The DIME Bomb: Yet Another Genotoxic weapon, Part 1; Al-Jazeera. www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27a/308.html
20. David Halpin, 14 August 2006; Are New weapons Being Used in Gaza and Lebanon; Electronic Intifada. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5528.shtml
21. James Brooks, 5 December 2006; The DIME Bomb: Yet Another Genotoxic weapon, Part III; Al-Jazeera. www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/oldsite/article.asp?ID=5648

• US senate call for rescinding the Goldstone report
• Israeli warplanes blast targets in Gaza

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israel returns to its characteristic Nazi mode

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[ 09/04/2011 – 11:17 PM ]

By Khalid Amayreh

Once again, Israel is having a free season on the Palestinian people. In less than 48 hours, Israel has murdered as many as 20 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians. Israel uses the most advanced and most lethal arms in the American arsenal to wreak death and havoc on an essentially unarmed and unprotected civilian population. Heavy artillery shells are often fired into heavily populated neighborhoods, with predictable consequences.

News reports from the Gaza Strip speak of White Phosphorus bombs being used again Gaza civilians. Israel heavily used this lethal type of death agent during its Nazi-like blitzkrieg on Gaza more than two years ago, incinerating many people and causing untold death.

None the less, the strange and conspicuous absence of world anger and condemnation seems to have emboldened the Judeo-Nazi state to commit more crimes.

More to the point, the recent statements by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which partially vindicated Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 2008-9 blitzkrieg seem to have convinced the Zionist leadership that no matter how many innocent Palestinians Israel may murder knowingly and deliberately, the apartheid Zionist entity will be always exonerated, thanks to American complicity and acquiescence.

Israel claims that its ongoing criminal aggression on Gaza has been a response to an attack by Hamas on an Israeli bus on 7 April, in which two Israelis were injured, one critically.

However, this is an obscene lie.

The nearly empty bus itself was moving in a military Zone which made it a legitimate target for the Palestinian resistance, especially when Israel kept killing Palestinians civilians regardless of the resistance.

This means that the attack on the bus, which Hamas said was not intended to harm Israeli children, was a response to earlier Israeli attacks which killed many innocent Palestinians.

For example, on Friday 1 April, Israel assassinated a 24-year-old member of a Palestinian resistance faction. The next day, the Israeli air force murdered three members of the same resistance group.

Similarly, on Tuesday, April 5, Israeli forces shot dead an innocent Palestinian in Northern Gaza . And on Wednesday, April 6, at dawn, Israeli forces bombarded Gaza in three air strikes, injuring four people, including two women (one of them pregnant) and a child.

On the same day, April 6, hundreds of Gazan children participated in a march, appealing to the international community to protect them against virtually daily Israeli raids and attacks.

Now, since April 7, the Israeli occupation army has killed as many as 20 Palestinians, mostly innocent men, women and children, at the pretext that an Israeli teenager or two were injured.

Dozens of other Palestinian civilians were also injured in these raids by the state-of-the art of the Israeli machine of death, such as F-16 fighter jets and the apache helicopter gunship.

This chronology of events proves beyond doubt that Israel has a fixed policy of attacking and killing innocent Palestinian civilians regardless of any Palestinian provocations.

Hamas has said repeatedly that it is not interested in a new round of war with the Zionist regime. After all, Gazans have not fully overcome the consequences of the last war and certainly have been unable to rebuild what the Israeli war machines destroyed during that criminal war.

However, Gazans will never surrender to Zionist aggression no matter how many Gazans are martyred in this long and bitter conflict with the Judeo-Nazi regime which thrives and prospers on violence and bloodshed.

It is true that the current circumstances in the world are not in the Palestinians’ favor. However, this should never mean that Israel will be able to wrest from Hamas now what the Israeli army couldn’t wrest during the murderous blitzkrieg more than two years ago, namely a sort of capitulation to Zionist whims and arrogance of power.

It is uncertain whether Israel is planning to re-occupy Gaza , even for a brief period of time.

However, there is no doubt that the current Israeli government, the most extremist and fascist in Israel’s history, would like to achieve a number of tactical goals by waging another wave of bloody aggression on the thoroughly brutalized people of Gaza.

These include achieving a high degree of deterrent vis-à-vis Palestinian resistance groups, especially Hamas. This deterrence eroded to a certain degree in recent weeks as Palestinian resistance factions sought to respond to Israeli provocations by firing projectiles onto Israeli-held territory every time Israel waged a new aggression against the Gaza Strip.

Israel also hopes to keep Palestinians under constant psychological pressure by keeping them in a constant state of vulnerability.

In the final analysis, Israel wants the Palestinians to suffer silently and die or more correctly be killed quietly or as quietly as possible, and not even cry out in the faces of their killers and tormentors.

Needless to say, this is not the behavior of a state that is interested in peace or even any acceptable modus vivendi with its neighbors.

It is a state that can’t survive without spilling blood and killing innocent human beings.

As such, this state is effectively digging its grave with its own hands. I have no doubt that the demise and downfall of Israel will be dramatic and thundering, at least in proportion to its arrogance and insolence.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Gilad Atzmon: Goldstone’s U-Turn

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If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,’ writes Richard Goldstone in an attempt to retract his own UN report.

And yet I wonder: how different would it be? How different could it be? Goldstone is impressed with Israel dedicating some “significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza’, but it somehow leaves me bewildered.

Let us assume that at the time Goldstone and his team looked into the cold blooded murder of more than 1400 Palestinians, they would also be aware of an Israeli enquiry. What difference would it make?


‘For example,’ says Goldstone, ‘the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently (according to the Israeli investigation) the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack.’

For some peculiar reason, Goldstone allows Israel to reduce its institutional responsibility for a colossal war crime, into a chain of local errors, made by a few low rank officers who may, or may not, face criminal charges.

One should remind Goldstone that the decision to use artillery and carpet bombardment in Gaza wasn’t taken by ‘some’ military commanders on the ground: these decisions were taken by a democratically elected Israeli cabinet. Furthermore, these decisions were supported at the time by 94% of the Israeli Jewish population.

 The decision to rain barrages of white phosphorous over the most populated place on this planet was a strategic decision, and it was taken by Israeli military high command. The fact that Israel (may) sacrifice the military career of one Moishe’le or two Yank’le doesn’t change the validity of Goldstone original report at all; it only proves that Israel fails to take responsibility for its actions.

The Israeli ‘enquiry’ should actually be interpreted as a typical act of Zionist cowardice, for the Jewish state fails to admit its collective responsibility for the atrocities it committed in the name of the Jewish people, and in the name of the Goldstones of this world. Instead of taking responsibility then, Israeli politicians now want to put the blame on Israel’s soldiers.

 And for some reason, Goldstone would like the Hamas to do the same: Goldstone (the new master of the U-Turn) foresees the Hamas behaving like Israel i.e. involved in spin and deception. He basically expects the Hamas to zigzag like himself.

But the Hamas is clearly made of better material — unlike Israeli politicians and Goldstone, the Hamas takes full responsibility for its actions. It openly and proudly resists the racist Jewish state. It is not trying to place the blame on some anonymous grass roots freedom fighters — The Hamas is sending love letters to the Palestinians’ stolen land. Indeed, some send messages in bottles; the Hamas send them in rockets. But the message is beautiful, simple and clear.

 ‘My lands, my soil, don’t lose your hope on us. We are here surrounded by barbed wire, but time will come soon for us to unite.’

In his convoluted Washington Post apology, Goldstone reveals a severe lack of understanding of Israeli militarism, its role, and its operational philosophy. Israeli strategy is based on the power of deterrence. Israel is there to terrify its neighbours, through death, and carnage. Israel believes that through shock and awe, it can exhaust the Palestinians, and break their spirit. Every so often, the Jewish state exercises a genocidal act — and the numbers of Palestinian fatalities speak for themselves.

More than 1400 Palestinians died in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead: they died because Israel believes that Jewish future security is a function of the pain it inflicts upon others. The Goldstone report exposes the criminality that is imbued within Israeli militarism, and Goldstone’s current attempt to dismantle his own report cannot wash away his original findings.

I tend to agree that Goldstone’s U Turn was surely inevitable: the history of Jewish animosity towards dissidents has long been firmly established, and in the last two years Goldstone and his family were subject to enormous pressure and social exclusion. It is more than likely that Goldstone was torn apart by it all. 

But the time has surely come to admit that we have reached the point of no return: we have to free our intellectual, spiritual and ethical life from any trace of Zionist ideology, from people who may have Zionist views or may have even been affiliated with Zionist philosophy.

I believe that ethical discourse should move beyond any form of Judeo centric ‘ethical zigzagging.’

Posted by Gilad Atzmon at 6:47:00 AM