Mohammad Othman, a prominent Palestinian activist involved with War on Want partner, Stop the Wall, has been detained without charge by Israeli authorities. His detention is illegal – and he now faces the risk of torture. We need to take action to free him now.

Write to the UK Foreign Secretary urging the British government to put pressure on Israel to release Mohammad immediately.

http://www.waronwant.org/Freemohammadothman

Mohammad has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to the defence of Palestinian human rights. Since his arrest by Israeli authorities on 22 September Mohammad has been subjected to six military hearings. Yet he still has not been charged with any crime, leading his lawyers to believe he is being targeted by Israel solely because of work in defence of human rights.

During his time in detention, Mohammad has been held mostly in solitary confinement and subjected to lengthy interrogation sessions, threats and sleep deprivation. He is currently being refused access to his lawyers and last week was secretly moved to a new detention centre, where his lawyers fear he could now be tortured.

War on Want is campaigning for Mohammad's urgent release. Please take this e-action now. With your help, we can free Mohammad Othman.

http://www.waronwant.org/Freemohammadothman

Thank you,

Yasmin Khan

Senior Campaigns Officer

Palestine@waronwant.org

visit: http://freemohammadothman.wordpress.com/

In an unusual decision, the Norwegian Nobel Committee put an end to seven months of searching among the 205 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize and conferred it upon Barack Obama.  The Norwegian committee's decision provoked very mixed international reactions: ranging from stupefaction to huge laughter.  The statement by the organization's president, Thorbjorn Jagland got straight to the point: "It's important for the Committee to recognize those people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year.  We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.  It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world."  The problem with Obama is that his idealism remains at the level of rhetoric, while in the world of realpolitik, his initiatives could not be more antagonistic to the search for peace in this world.

The key to peace in the Middle East is restoration of international law and the recognition of the right of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews to live in peace and security side by side. As President Obama says, there is no peace process today. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, continues to extend illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and maintain a near-complete blockade of Gaza. Palestinians fire ineffectual rockets into Israel. Israel regularly attacks Palestinian territories with modern weapons.

No major conflict can be resolved without each side talking to the other. That was the case in South Africa, Ireland and countless other situations where people said they would never talk to their opponents. I was vilified in the Eighties for saying that, to resolve the Irish conflict, you had to talk to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

In the Middle East, peace can only be achieved through discussion between the elected representatives of both the Israelis and the Palestinians – and that means Hamas, which won a big majority in the last Palestinian parliamentary election, as well as Fatah. This does not mean that I agree with the views of Hamas, Fatah or the government of Israel. Far from it: I do not. For example, I think a number of passages in the original Hamas charter are unacceptable and should be repudiated. Many observers believe that this is also the view of some in Hamas.

Yet, for too many people, Hamas as an organisation remains opaque. What they know about it is derived from a hostile media; it has no face. Most would probably think its leader is some disturbed Osama Bin Laden figure. In fact, al-Qaeda's supporters in Gaza are so hostile to Hamas that they have declared war on it.

For these reasons, I thought it important to interview the de facto leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, who lives in exile in Syria. Not every issue is clear. But at the beginning of any peace process, what matters most is engagement. Dialogue is necessary to get to clarity and mutual understanding. Sinn Fein did not answer every question at the beginning and neither does Binyamin Netanyahu today. The answers from Meshal come at a time of heightened tensions and renewed death threats against him, adding to the permanent danger of assassination bids not only by the Israelis, but also al-Qaeda supporters in the region.

I hope this interview will help to make the case for the dialogue that is needed, which I believe is inevitable. It is simply a question of how much suffering there will be, on both sides, before we get there.

Ken Livingstone: Could you explain a little about your childhood and the experiences that shaped your development into the person you are today?

Khaled Meshal: I was born in the West Bank village of Silwad near Ramallah in 1956. In my early age, I learned from my father how he was part of the Palestinian revolution against the British mandate in Palestine in the Thirties and how he fought, alongside other Palestinians using primitive weapons, against the well-equipped and trained Zionist gangs attacking Palestinian villages in 1948.

I lived in Silwad for 11 years until the 1967 war, when I was forced with my family, like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, to leave home and settle in Jordan. That was a shocking experience I will never forget.

KL: What happened to you after the war?

KM: Soon afterwards, I left Jordan for Kuwait, where my father had already been working and living since before 1967. After completing my primary education in 1970, I joined the prestigious Abdullah al-Salim Secondary School. In the early Seventies, it was a hub of intense political and ideological activity.

During my second year at al-Salim school, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Upon finishing my fourth year successfully I secured admission to Kuwait University, where I studied for a BSc degree in physics.

Kuwait University had an active branch of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), which had been under the absolute control of the Fatah movement. I and my fellow Islamists decided, in 1977, to join GUPS, which we had previously shunned, and contest its leadership election. However, working from within GUPS proved impossible; we felt constantly impeded and realised we Islamists would never be given a chance. By 1980, two years after I graduated, my juniors decided to leave GUPS and form their own Palestinian association on campus.

Many of the students had become disillusioned with the Palestinian leadership, who seemed intent on settling for much less than what they had grown up dreaming of, namely the complete liberation of Palestine and the return of all the refugees to their homes.

KL: What is the situation in Gaza today?

KM: Gaza today is under siege. Crossings are closed most of the time and for months victims of the Israeli war on Gaza have been denied ­access to construction materials to rebuild their destroyed homes. Schools, hospitals and homes in many parts of the Gaza Strip are in need of rebuilding. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. As winter approaches, the conditions of these victims will only get worse in the cold and rain. One and a half million people are held hostage in one of the biggest prisons in the history of humanity. They are unable to travel freely out of the Strip, whether for medical treatment, for education or for other needs. What we have in Gaza is a disaster and a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Israelis. The world community, through its silence and indifference, colludes in this crime.

KL: Why do you think Israel is still imposing the siege on Gaza?

KM: The Israelis claim that the siege is for security reasons. The real intention is to pressure Hamas by punishing the entire population. The sanctions were put in place soon after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. While security is one of their concerns, it is not the main motivation. The primary objective is to provoke a coup against the results of the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power. The Israelis and their allies seek to impose failure on Hamas by persecuting the people. This is a hideous and immoral endeavour. Today, the siege continues despite the fact that we have, for the past six months, observed a ceasefire. Last year, a truce was observed from June to December 2008. Yet the siege was never lifted, and the sanctions remained in place. Undermining Hamas is the main objective of the siege. The Israelis hope to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas by increasing the suffering of the entire population of the Strip.

KL: How many supporters of Hamas and elected representatives of Hamas are there in prison in Israel? Have they all been charged and convicted of crimes?

KM: Out of a total of 12,000 Palestinian captives in Israeli detention, around 4,000 are Hamas members. These include scores of ministers and parliamentarians (Palestinian Legislative Council members). Around ten have recently been released, but about 40 PLC members remain in detention. Some have been given sentences, but many are held in what the Israelis call administrative detention. The only crime these people are accused of is their association with Hamas's parliamentary group. Exercising one's democratic right is considered a crime by Israel. All these Palestinians are brought before an Israeli system of justice that has nothing to do with justice. The Israeli judiciary is an instrument of the occupation. In Israel, there are two systems of justice: one applies to Israelis and another applies to the Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime.

KL: What part, if any, do other states and insti­tutions, such as the US, the EU, Britain, Egypt, or the Palestinian Authority, play in the blockade of Gaza?

KM: The blockade of Gaza would never have succeeded had it not been for the collusion of regional and international powers.

KL: How do you think the blockade can be lifted?

KM: In order for the blockade to be lifted, the rule of international law must be respected. The basic human rights of the Palestinians and their right to live in dignity and free from persecution would have to be acknowledged. There has to be an international will to serve justice and uphold the basic principles of international human rights law. The international community would have to free itself from the shackles of Israeli pressure, speak the truth and act accordingly.

KL: Israel says that the bombing and invasion of Gaza last year was in response to repeated breaking of the ceasefire by Hamas and the firing of rockets into southern Israel. Is this the case?

KM: The Israelis are not telling the truth. We ­entered into a truce deal with Israel from 19 June to 19 December 2008. Yet the blockade was not lifted. The deal entailed a bilateral ceasefire, lifting the blockade and opening the crossings. We fully abided by the ceasefire while Israel only partially observed it, and towards the end of the term it resumed hostilities. Throughout that ­period, Israel maintained the siege and only intermittently opened some of the crossings, ­allowing no more than 10 per cent of the basic needs of the Gazan population to get through. Israel killed the potential for renewing the truce because it deliberately and repeatedly violated it.

I have always informed my western visitors, including the former US president Jimmy Carter, that the moment Hamas is offered a truce that includes lifting the blockade and opening the crossings, Hamas will adopt a positive stance. So far, no one has made us any such offer. As far as we are concerned, the blockade amounts to a declaration of war that warrants self-defence.

KL: What are the ideology and goals of Hamas?

KM: Our people have been the victims of a colonial project called Israel. For years, we have suffered various forms of repression. Half of our people have been dispossessed and are denied the right to return to their homes, and half live under an occupation regime that violates their basic human rights. Hamas struggles for an end to occupation and for the restoration of our people's rights, including their right to return home.

KL: What is your view of the cause of the conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinians?

KM: The conflict is the outcome of aggression and occupation. Our struggle against the Israelis is not because they are Jewish, but because they invaded our homeland and dispossessed us. We do not accept that because the Jews were once persecuted in Europe they have the right to take our land and throw us out. The injustices suffered by the Jews in Europe were horrible and criminal, but were not perpetrated by the Palestinians or the Arabs or the Muslims. So, why should we be punished for the sins of others or be made to pay for their crimes?

KL: Do you believe that Israel intends to continue to expand its borders?

KM: Israel does not, officially, have stated borders. When Israel was created in our homeland 62 years ago, its founders dreamed of a "Greater Israel" that extended from the Nile to the Euphrates. Expansionism manifested itself on different occasions: in 1956, in 1967 and later on in the occupation of parts of Lebanon in the Eighties. Arab weakness, Israeli military superiority, the support given to Israel by the western powers, and the massacres it was prepared to commit against unarmed civilians in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon, enabled it to expand from time to time. Although expansionism still lurks in the minds of many Israelis, it would seem that this is no longer a practical option. Lebanese and Palestinian resistance has forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally from lands it had previously occupied through war and aggression. While in the past Israel was able to defeat several Arab armies, today it faces formidable resistance that will not only check its expansionism but also, in time, force it to relinquish more of the land that it illegally occupies.

KL: What are your principal goals? Is Hamas primarily a political or a religious organisation?

KM: Hamas is a national liberation movement. We do not see a contradiction between our Islamic identity and our political mission. While we engage the occupiers through resistance and struggle to achieve our people's rights, we are proud of our religious identity that derives from Islam. Unlike the experience of the Europeans with Christianity, Islam does not provide for, demand or recognise an ecclesiastical authority. It simply provides a set of broad guidelines whose detailed interpretations are subject to and the product of human endeavour (ijtihad).

KL: Are you committed to the destruction of Israel?

KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us, incarcerates us and persecutes our people. We are the victims, Israel is the oppressor, and not vice versa.

KL: Why does Hamas support military force in this conflict?

KM: Military force is an option that our people resort to because nothing else works. Israel's conduct and the collusion of the international community, whether through silence or indifference or actual embroilment, vindicate armed resistance. We would love to see this conflict resolved peacefully. If occupation were to come to an end and our people enabled to exercise self-determination in their homeland, there would then be no need for any use of force. The reality is that nearly 20 years of peaceful negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis have not restored any of our rights. On the contrary, we have incurred more suffering and more losses as a result of the one-sided compromises made by the Palestinian negotiating party.

Since the PLO entered into the Oslo peace deal with Israel in 1993, more Palestinian land in the West Bank has been expropriated by the Israelis to build more illegal Jewish settlements, expand existing ones or construct highways for the exclusive use of Israelis living in these settlements. The apartheid wall that the Israelis erected along the West Bank has consumed large areas of the land that was supposed to be returned to the Palestinians according to the peace deal.

The apartheid wall and hundreds of checkpoints turned the West Bank into isolated enclaves like cells in a large prison, which makes life intolerable.

Jerusalem is constantly tampered with in order to alter its landscape and identity, and hundreds of Palestinian homes have been destroyed inside the city and around it, making thousands of Palestinians homeless in their own homeland. Instead of releasing Palestinian prisoners, the Israelis have arrested an additional 5,000 Palestinians since the Annapolis peace conference in 2007 – actions that testify to the fact they simply aren't interested in peace at all.

KL: Does Hamas engage in military activity outside Palestine?

KM: No; since its establishment 22 years ago, Hamas has confined its field of military operation to occupied Palestine.

KL: Do you wish to establish an Islamic state in Palestine in which all other religions are subordinate?

KM: Our priority as a national liberation movement is to end the Israeli occupation of our homeland. Once our people are free in their land and enjoy the right to self-determination, they alone have the final say on what system of governance they wish to live under. It is our firm belief that Islam cannot be imposed on the people. We shall campaign, in a fully democratic process, for an Islamic agenda. If that is what the people opt for, then that is their choice. We believe that Islam is the best source of guidance and the best guarantor for the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

KL: Does Hamas impose Islamic dress in Gaza? For example, is it compulsory in Gaza for women to wear the hijab, niqab or burqa?

KM: No. Intellectually, Hamas derives its vision from the people's culture and religion. Islam is our religion and is the basic constituent of our culture. We do not deny other Palestinians the right to have different visions. We do not impose on the people any aspects of religion or social conduct. Features of religion in Gaza society are genuine and spontaneous; they have not been imposed by any authority other than the faith and conviction of the observant.

KL: It is suggested that the division in the Palestinian people between the West Bank and Gaza and between Fatah and Hamas, which obviously weakens their position, came about because Hamas seized power by force in Gaza. Is this true and how do you explain this division?

KM: Undoubtedly, division does weaken the Palestinians and harms their cause. However, the division is caused not by Hamas, but by the insistence of certain international and regional parties on reversing the results of Palestinian democracy. It dismayed them that Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people.

The division is compounded by the existence of a Palestinian party that seeks empowerment from those same regional and international parties, including the US and Israel, that wish to see Hamas out of the arena. Soon after its victory in the election of January 2006, every effort was exerted to undermine the ability of Hamas to govern.

When these efforts failed, General Keith Dayton, of the United States army, who currently serves as US security co-ordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was despatched to Gaza to plot a coup against the Hamas-led national unity government that came out of the Mecca agreement of 2007. The plot prompted Hamas in Gaza to act in self-defence in the events of June 2007. The claim that Hamas carried out a coup is baseless because Hamas was leading the democratically elected government. All it did was act against those who were plotting a coup against it under the command and guidance of General Dayton.

KL: Do those of other political or religious views such as Fatah enjoy democratic freedoms in Gaza? What is the situation of Hamas members in the West Bank territories controlled by Fatah?

KM: Some Palestinian factions have been inspired by Arab nationalism, others by Marxism or Leninism, and others by liberalism. While we strongly believe that these ideas are alien to our people and have failed to meet their aspirations, we insist that the people are the final arbiter on whom they wish to lead them and by which system they desire to be governed. Thus, democracy is our best option for settling our internal Palestinian differences. Whatever the people choose will have to be respected.

We endeavour to the best of our ability to protect the human rights and civil liberties of the affiliates of Fatah and all the other factions within the Gaza Strip. In contrast, the Palestinians in the West Bank under Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah continue to be denied their basic rights. General Dayton is in the West Bank supervising the ­severe and brutal crackdown on Hamas and other Palestinian groups. More than 1,000 political prisoners, including students, university professors and professionals in all fields are hunted down, detained and tortured, sometimes to death, by the US-, British- and EU-trained and -sponsored Palestinian Authority's security force.

KL: Do you believe it is possible to reunite the Palestinian people? If so, how do you think this could be done and within what kind of timescale?

KM: It is possible to reunite the Palestinians. In order for this to happen two things are needed. First, foreign interventions and demands must stop. The Palestinian people should be left to deal with their own differences without external pressure. Second, all Palestinian parties must respect the rules of the democratic game and submit to the results of its process.

KL: Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel is frequently cited as an insuperable obstacle to negotiations and a peace settlement.

KM: This issue is only used as a pretext. Israel does not recognise the rights of the Palestinian people, yet this is not raised as an obstacle to Israel being internationally recognised nor to it being allowed to take part in talks. The reality is that Israel is the one that occupies the land and possesses superior power. Rather than ask the Palestinians, who are the victims, it is Israel, who is the oppressor, who should be asked to recognise the rights of the Palestinians.

In the past, Yasser Arafat recognised Israel but failed to achieve much. Today, Mahmoud Abbas recognises Israel, but we have yet to see any of the promised dividends of the peace process.

Israel concedes only under pressure. In the absence of any tangible pressure on Israel by the Arabs or by the international community, no settlement will succeed.

KL: Do you have a "road map" of interim steps which could realistically lead to a peaceful settlement of the conflict? Do you think Jews, Muslims and Christians can one day live together in peace in the Holy Land?

KM: We do, in Hamas, believe that a realistic peaceful settlement to the conflict will have to begin with a ceasefire agreement between the two sides based on a full withdrawal of Israel from all the territories occupied in 1967. Israeli intransigence and the lack of will to act on the part of the international community are what ­impede this settlement. We believe that only once our people are free and back in their land will they be able to determine the future of the conflict.

It should be reiterated here that we do not resist the Israelis because they are Jews. As a matter of principle, we do not have problems with the Jews or the Christians, but do have a problem with those who attack us and oppress us. For many centuries, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully in this part of the world. Our society never witnessed the sort of racism and genocide that Europe saw until recently against "the other". These issues started in Eur­ope. Colonialism was imposed on this region by Europe, and Israel was the product of the oppression of the Jews in Europe and not of any such problem that existed in the Muslim land.

KL: What role do you think that other countries and organisations, in particular the US, EU and Britain, are currently playing in the Israel/ Palestine conflict and the divisions between the Palestinians?

KM: The role played by all these has thus far been negative. The attitude towards Israeli crimes against our people has been either silence or collusion. The policies and positions adopted by these parties have contributed to the Palestinian division or augmented it. On the one hand, conditions are stipulated that have the effect of torpedoing unity talks and reconciliation efforts. On the other hand, some of these international parties are directly embroiled in suppressing our people in the West Bank. The US and the EU provide funding, training and guidance to build a Palestinian security apparatus specialised in the persecution of critics of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

We have particularly been concerned about reports that the British government, directly as well as indirectly by means of security firms and the services of retired army, police and in­telligence officers, is fully involved in the programme led by General Dayton against Hamas in the West Bank.

KL: What should countries such as the US and Britain do to assist a peaceful settlement?

KM: They should simply uphold international law – the occupation is illegal, the annexation of East Jerusalem is illegal, the settlements are illegal, the apartheid wall is illegal, and the siege of Gaza is illegal. Yet nothing is done.

KL: What relations does Hamas wish to have with the rest of the world, and, for example, with Britain?

KM: Hamas defends a just cause. For this purpose, it desires to open up to the world. The movement seeks to establish good relations and to conduct constructive dialogue with all those concerned with Palestine.

Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2009/09/israel-palestinian-hamas

The felonious Adam Malul commented on what Gadi Shamni, saying: “the GOC Gadi Shamni is trying to pretty up the picture; in fact he knows what's happening on the ground, but he chooses to stay in his ivory tower and keep his face clean. I am not ashamed of smacking the Palestinian; it was what I had to do. My commanders on the ground, my company commander, battalion commander and brigade commander backed me up, and I did what I was taught by my superiors”. He added: "in the territories. There are those that get dirty every day to defend the State's security".

On 29 July 2009, the Israeli military war criminal Central Command Chief Major General Gadi Shamni issued Military Order 1644 related to so-called “juveniles”. The order is a violation of the Fourth Geneva and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel itself had signed. The order is furthermore a grave crime against humanity, as it implements the stance often expressed by representatives of the “state of Israel”, according to which Palestinians have no human rights, what implies that we are not humans.

Shamni concludes his criminal military order by referring to paragraphs which clearly show bad faith, and the bad intentions of Shamni towards the Palestinian children detainees, as it is clearly intended by the Central Command GOC to circumvent the international laws and treaties related to children, and to “legalize” current criminal practices of Israel. See the English translation of the military order 1644 as PDF See the Arabic translation of the military order 1644 as PDF.

• Instructions of this order do not apply to cases in which the list of charges were made prior to the entry of this order into force. He means the 342 children who are currently incarcerated.
• The order enters into force sixty days from the date of issuance, and expires one year later. This means during this time, the troops of Shamni will catch some hundreds of Palestinian children among the peace protesters who throw stones at the Apartheid wall, and that they will be “found guilty” by military judges acting under Order 1644/2009 amendment number (109) issued by Shamni. It does not mean that less children are shot, murdered, tortured, abused or incarcerated – it just means that now these crimes are legalized.

Has anyone heard of any country in the world where children are tortured and incarcerated because of throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp where they live?

Has anyone heard that a state establish a military court to submit oppressed children to “trials”, because these children dared to express their anger over the violation of their rights by throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp in which they live?

Has anyone heard about any state which claims that the establishment of a military court was in response to the terms of international conventions on children rights?

Since when do the rights of children call for the establishment of military courts to more effectively prosecute them?

Since when have concrete walls needed armies and military courts to defend them?

This farce and the sanctimonious resolutions and crimes against humanity are taking place only in the zionist “state” called Israel. If this happened in any other country in the world, then the so-called, self-nominated democratic governments would issued a formal and explicit condemnation against that country. But rarely, if ever, do these countries issue such condemnations against Israel, which is governed by war criminals and psychopath military leaders.

Dozens of journalists from Israeli newspapers reported about this military order issued by the IDF Central Command GOC, the war criminal Gadi Shamni, as an achievement. If these wannabe-journalists had read the order issued by the Shamni, resolution 1644 on the establishment of a military court for “juveniles”, actually for Palestinian children, they would understand that the military order of Shamni is not only a crime against children, but against humanity, and against the present of Israel.

People acting as judges in these so-called military court for juveniles would be war criminals themselves. These “judges” of military courts are responsible for incarcerating thousands of Palestinian children during the past 42 years.

Currently there are 342 children incarcerated by these psychopaths among criminals, drugs dealers, sexual perverts, and these children are all subject to continuous sessions of torture to force them to become collaborators with the IDF military intelligence.

Shamni himself is directly responsible for the murders of 975 children by snipers over the past years and the currently incarcerated 342 Palestinian children in his jails. Before that, while Shamni was a colonel and the military commander of Hebron in the years between 1995 – 1997, he himself was involved in terrorizing, sniping and incarcerating many Palestinian children as well as adults, looting Palestinian agricultural lands, vandalizing Palestinian property lands and opening road for the jewish squatters.

Major General Gadi Shamni, the current IDF Central Command GOC, was the military occupation commander in my homeland, the city of Hebron. I know him in person. I know that he participated in and committed crimes against humanity and crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

One of the most horrible military operations which Gadi Shamni lead in Hebron was with the “mistaravim” (“those who look like Arabs”), IDF paramilitary death squads, after the Hebron redeployment in 1997. These units wear civilian clothes and they hide their weapons under their long shirts. These units are manned with Druze soldiers who look like Palestinians, so that normal people going about their business are not aware of their presence. In one operation which I witnessed, which took place at the end of July 1997, Shamni sent these death squad units into the middle of Al-Shalala street in the (in name) Palestinian controlled area. It was later said that the undercover soldiers who took part in this incident were from the Duvdevan unit. The mission of these death squads was to catch and kill some children, young boys from the area under the purported control of the Palestinian Authority, and that is what they did.

Shamni himself was leading the mission. He was in the middle of the separation area in Al-Shalala Street, near the Al-Ja’abari pharmacy. His plan was to let his troops stationed on the rooftop of the Al-Said building in the same street throw an Israeli flag in the middle of the Palestinians going about their personal business, just for provocation. His death squads were ready to shoot, murder and arrest anyone. When the youths in the area started stepping on and burning the flag, the “mistaravim” started arresting these children and shooting in the middle of crowded street. A boy of age 9 in the crowd was killed next to me, and I was nearly shot. I witnessed several people in the crowd, some with bullet wounds, being dragged on the ground like sacks by the death squads to where Gadi had set up his command post. I remember being very scared and angry.

I went to the area where Colonel Gadi Shamni was standing and smiling of happiness after this incident. I told him in an angry voice that what he had done to catch some children aged under 15 years was a disgusting bloody game. Gadi did not pay attention to my words, he just continued smiling and expressing his “victories” of having snatched some  children, of shooting and the terrorizing innocent people in the street.

In the words of the lawyer of the Defence of Children International “DCI” human rights organization, Khalid Quzmar:

DCI-Palestine is of the view that children should not be tried in military courts with minimal fair trial guarantees and has a number of particular concerns regarding Military Order 1644 and the treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military legal system. DCI-Palestine’s concerns include the following:

Palestinian children are still being interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or family member. The overwhelming majority of these children report being mistreated and forced into providing confessions during interrogation. These interrogations are still not being video recorded, as recommended by the UN Committee Against Torture in May 2009.

Children as young as 12 can still be tried in the military courts, and are treated as adults as soon as they turn 16. This is in contrast to the Israeli domestic legal system that fixes the age of majority at 18, in accordance with generally accepted comparable principles of juvenile justice.

Military Order 1644 provides for the appointment of ‘juvenile judges’ by the Military Court of Appeal. These ‘juvenile judges’ are themselves, military court judges who ‘must be prepared to be competent for the post’. No further information is provided to shed light on how it is anticipated these military court judges are suitably qualified to adjudicate cases involving 12 year old children.

Military Order 1644 exempts all hearings to determine whether a child should be kept in pre-trial detention until the end of the legal proceedings from the requirement of having to be heard before a ‘juvenile judge’.

Much of the language used in Military Order 1644 is discretionary in nature, not mandatory. For example, the ‘juvenile military court’ must convene in separate rooms ‘as much as possible’ and children must not be brought to the court, or detained with adults, ‘as much as possible.’

It must be recalled that over 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israeli military courts each year and the most common charge is throwing stones, including throwing stones at the Wall. The changes proposed by Military Order 1644 appear to lack substance.

As a minimum safeguard, DCI-Palestine continues to call upon the Israeli authorities to:

Ensure that no child is interrogated in the absence of a lawyer of their choice or family member;

Ensure that all interrogations of children are video recorded;

Ensure that all evidence suspected of being obtained through ill-treatment or torture be rejected by the military courts;

Ensure that all credible allegations of ill-treatment and torture be thoroughly and impartially investigated and those found responsible for such abuse be brought to justice.

She slowly spreads her legs, then she raises them high, before she rests her right leg on a couch’s armrest, and waits for seconds, then she quickly jumps up, she slackens the reins of her body another time proceeding with its hysteric movements, which don’t lack defiance, and don’t rest except when a wave of clapping and shouts breaks out: She practices her private rituals, which usually mixes between art, sex and religion… But she lately chose to reduce it to a politically guided message, which is passed from a place where nobody can miss its meaning. 

Is Madonna praying or harloting?!

 The audience thoroughly reads the message. Follows up with passion the divergence of the thighs and her buttocks shaking, but they were waiting for her promised last surprise: The white and blue flag covering the burning and squirming body on the stage fluttering in the humid air under spotlights, to announce that the meeting had actually taken place in that dramatic moment, which required years’ long parade of passing away appointments, and processes of reciprocal temptations until all obstacles of separation had melted down.

What used to look like a dancing movement that the singer used to perform up till it became an identification mark and a feature of her body, now has a different meaning, there is a new identity that represents itself, and announcing her joining that small religious group, and asks to receive its blessing, and calls with the diverged and raised thighs, prophet Jacob himself and nobody else, so as to fall upon her and justify her belonging to his descendents even if it was somehow late. And when she received the response in approval, she exclaimed with open ecstasy: “Israel is the center of energy in this world, and it is the axis of peace on this earth.”

Before she reached this climax, she inspired that she is torturing her body and mind. She looked far far away to find that there is a faction called “The Cabala”, which is joined by only the well learned in studies of the Torah and the Talmud, and when she became forty years old, which is the year specified for membership, she started her repeated trips looking for the ultimate truth that is buried in the midst of legends, up till she found it at the age of fifty four, and discovered that it doesn’t require one to give-up that impudent dance, on the contrary it could be calling for it, and consider it of the rituals of piety or actually an approximation to that prophet in particular.

For six nights Madonna danced in “Israel”, and it is said that she sang too, though nobody heard her singing before then and no one memorized her words. In the seventh day she decided to rest as a guest of Benjamin Netanyahu and ask him for her new citizenship identity papers, which she couldn’t obtain from his competitor, Tzipi Livni the night before, he promised to look into the matter, and to publish her letter for the public to read, that is yearning for another idea that it is fighting for other peoples and nations, and diffuse the common impression about its savageness and barbarism, through a famous American artist, who at last discovered herself and through a religious justification by her harlotry dancing.

Assafir – Sep. 5th. 2009

Madonna, Israel’s New Best Friend

hip-hop by Guzin Bilgi 

What's the deal?
Madonna and Israel?
They have a common zeal?
Is she simply a "friend"?
Or a very good weapon
on Israel's right hand?
Their intimacy is very very mysterious
The impact of this fuck quite tremendous
I could not call this bitch an artist
But rather a brilliant whore and a dumb cabalist!

see the video and read the article  http://thefastertimes.com/israel/2009/09/05/madonna-israels-new-bff/

NOTE: the previous version of this post contained the original Arabic of the article and the Arabic Translation of Guzin's hip-hop by Adib.

To see them visit: www.tlaxcala.es

The past is an integral part of the present, history is the past, especially if the past is associated with oppression, persecution and tyranny of the strong against the weak, and of the occupation against

If the past is associated with war crimes and crimes against humanity and injustice, then the history of the perpetrators is the history of criminals and their crimes, and the victims must never forget, never forgive, lest the perpetrators continue on their path of crimes. Nobody can ask from perpetrators to take responsibility for their crimes, because if they were responsible, or even capable of responsibility, to begin with, they would not engage in acts understood as reprehensible by the vast majority of humanity. The victims, on the other hand, have the responsibility not only to take care of ourselves, but to do everything in our power to stop the perpetrators, and to warn others about them.

I remember hearing my mother say that “the right can not be lost as long as the owner stands behind his right, questioning the right of the criminal and demanding his own right, until justice is achieved”.

The Justice is my goal, and the law is the only way to achieve justice, even after a hundred thousand years. If I die before achieving justice, I will leave it in will to my heirs to claim my rights, be it in one, ten, thousand or hundred thousand years. The jews will give me justice and restore my rights, be it the jews of today, or be it their descendants in 10,000 generations. (Kawther)

On August 21, 2009, I found out that the Israeli war criminal, the former military commander of Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, had been appointed as CEO and a coordinator for foreign expansion of an Israeli coffee company, "Aroma", in Europe (Romania, Ukraine, Cyprus) and elsewhere.

I know Sharon personally: he was the best of the worst of the IDF war criminals who served in the occupied territories. He was interested in having  good contact with journalists in order to cover the IDF crimes commited under his command.

I still remember all the grave crimes which he committed and covered in my homeland Hebron, (actually I was one of his victims, my hand was broken under his command). I have all the names of the children who were sniped, murdered and jailed under his command, I know all the military orders which he issued to pilfer the Palestinians property, I also appeared with him in the film “Hebron City without Mercy” in which I exposed the scandalous crimes of his soldiers, who forced Palestinians of Hebron to drink their urine in plastic bottles.

I know Yigal Sharon, who participated in and committed crimes against humanity, crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Yigal Sharon also aided and abetted the criminal lawlessness of the jewish squatters present in Hebron: he conspired with them to dismiss the Israeli police chief at the time, Ish "Bono" Yemeni, who saw his duty in implementing the law equally for all instead of acquiescing to the crimes of the IDF and the squatters.

Because of Yigal Sharon's shameful and criminal past, I wrote AROMA Coffee informing them that it is not acceptable to give employment as the representative of their company in Europe to a war criminal.

A copy of e-mail was sent to the European commission, the chambers of commerce of the countries where Aroma conducts business, and human organizations interested in the issue.

I have not received an answer from Aroma, so I decided to publish the letter, and to seek the help of everybody, also from human rights organizations, to help me to sue Yigal Sharon to try to secure an arrest warrant against him for war crimes anytime he enters Europe.

From: K Salam <email>

To: info@aroma.co.il; dmachover@hickmanandrose.co.uk

Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 5:25:50 PM

Subject: Yigal Sharon

Ladies and gentlemen,

I just found out that a war criminal, a murderer of Palestinian children in Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, is the CEO of Aroma Israel, and that he coordinates the development business abroad (in Europe and elsewhere).

As a defender of human rights, a journalist and a victim of colonel Yigal Sharon, and also in the name of many other victims of Yigal Sharon from Hebron, like for example Hosam abu Allan, Wael Al-Shukhi, Samer Karameh, Lina Misk, I would appreciate if you end the employment of Yigal Sharon with Aroma Israel, as a coordinator of the brand "Marrone Rosso" in Europe and elsewhere, and in any other position.

As a victim of Yigal Sharon and also in the name of the many other victims of the crimes of Yigal Sharon in Hebron, I think that it is not acceptable to give employment to a war criminal as the representative of your company in Europe or anywhere else, where human rights and the laws are respected. I reserve the right to initiate and follow legal steps against Yigal Sharon, wherever he is. I think that it is in the best interest of your company to not be seen as associated with a war criminal and perpetrator of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Outside of Israel, most people prefer not to buy their coffee from people with blood on their hands.

I ask your cooperation in bringing the war criminal Sharon to court for his many crimes. Much success for your company Aroma, but without the war criminal Yigal Sharon.

Thank you for your consideration,

Which are the laws that Yigal Sharon studied at the School of Law? Were they the unjust laws which he imposed  in my homeland. Or were they the codes of "honor" of criminal organizations, of gangs of murderers, thieves and rapists?

(in the photo: People in Johannesburg March in Solidarity with Palestine.)

I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies – a racist organization by any standards – as well as the content of your speech at that forum.

I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than five years in  Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.

I would like to take issue with the manner in which you express your support for the two-state solution: "It is a solution that fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, adjoining, and viable state of Palestine" (emphasis mine). Allow me, Mr. President, as a resident of Gaza, to express my shock with the fact that – only 8 months after the Gaza massacre, in which 1500 civilians, including 434 children, were brutally murdered – you still believe that there are two symmetrical sides. You even call it the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict!" Was that your belief in the 1970's and 80's; that there were "two-sides" to the South African "conflict"? Were there two equal parties, namely White and Black, with equal claim to the land and equal historical responsibility for the-then status quo? No doubt, this sounds like a bizarre interpretation of South African history and one which we Palestinians find equally astounding when applied to our history and our reality today.

Mr. President, these words of yours are even more disturbing, given your own involvement in the commendable struggle against the brutal, anti-human apartheid system and the notion of "independent homelands" which were based on the separation of human beings. Your struggle as Black South Africans, was morally superior to apartheid because it was inclusive where apartheid focused on separation; it was embracing where apartheid focused on division; it was life-affirming where apartheid was violent and murderous.

The South African anti-apartheid goal, adopted by anti-apartheid activists all around the world was unequivocal: the end of the racist system and ideology of apartheid. There could be no toenadering (rapprochement) with apartheid ideologues; no creation of homelands and puppet leaders: the system had to be dismantled in its entirety. Many South Africans supported by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign, sacrificed their lives to bring down the Bantustansan euphemistically, called independent homelands by the apartheid regime.  Mr. President, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, the Mxenges, the Slovosac to mention but a few anti-apartheid heroes must have listened to the speech to the JBD and wondered what happened to the universal values and human rights espoused by the ANC.

Comrade Jacob (if I may),

I would like to brief you on the nature of the powerful party, i.e. Israel – with whom your post-apartheid government still, amazingly, maintains exceptional diplomatic and economic ties.

Unlike the new post-apartheid South Africa, which you helped to create, in the State of Israel all human beings are NOT equal. There are fundamental artificially created and selectively rewarded  a level of of citizens in the state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. It, therefore, creates a bizarre distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship." Almost 22% of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who are excluded from such a definition. Israel thus, by definition is NOT the state of its citizens, but rather that of "The Jewish People", most of whom, like the members of JBD whom you were addressing, have no birthright connection to it. The question which begs an answer is what the status of those Palestinian citizens in a Jewish state is? The answer is, as every single – to use a word you must abhor "non-white" South African knows: Racism.

The delegates at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish, but at the same time, South African citizens "enjoy full rights" in Israel, rights that apartheid Israel denies to us, the indigenous people of this land. They also call us "Israeli Arabs",  "Jerusalem residents", "Arabs of the territories", not to mention the refugees living in the Diaspora, whose mere mention always spoils any party, and whose right to return and compensation is sanctioned by International Law (UNGA resolution 194).

Israeli nationality, therefore, is non-existent. Instead, there is "Jewish Nationality". To make such a bizarre term comprehensible, think of "White Nationality" as opposed to South African. In your speech before the JBD, you state very eloquently that "(m)uch as we are conscious of who we are culturally and otherwise, it must not take away the national identity, as we should be South Africans first".

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes of Apartheid, Article 2, Part 3, clearly defines apartheid as:

"[a]ny legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work… the right to education, the right to leave and return to their country the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence."

This definition, in its entirety, clearly applies not only to the Palestinian people residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also those living in Israel itself. This is precisely the reason that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Territories, a fellow South African, John Dugard, concluded that "the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices".

If you were born to Palestinian parents living in Israel – a fate you have been spared, Mr. President – you too would be denied the rights of  "Jewish Nationality" and been forced to submit to institutionalized inferiority or choose to resist it.

Furthermore, ICSPCA (quoted above), Article 2, Part 4, makes it crystal clear that:

"[t]he term 'the crime of apartheid',' shall apply to "any measures including legislative measure, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate measures and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups The expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof.."

Comrade Jacob, the word apartheid never appears once in your speech before the JBD! A listener would never know that you were speaking to an audience who actively support apartheid in another country.

Did you know that racist laws used to forbid Black property ownership in white areas in apartheid South Africa are in force in apartheid Israel? Indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are not only prohibited from living on land owned by "Jewish institutions",  but are also not allowed by force of "law" to reside in any areas designated "Jewish" either.

I, myself, Mr. President, a resident of Gaza, like so many Palestinians, have legal title to my parents' land in Israel, but have no "legal" right to it because my parents' property, like that  of millions of other Palestinians', was taken away from us and given over to Jewish ownership. The facts are that Jews owned only 7% of Palestine before 1948; today 93% is considered "state land" and can only be owned by Jews or Israel.

This is only one example, Comrade Jacob, of the nature of the state your government deems "democratic"and "friendly" despite its past strategic ties with apartheid SA. In your presidential campaign, you were quoted singing "kill the Boer!" And yet, in your speech, you "unequivocally" condemn "all forms of violence from whatever quarter", particularly where civilians are targeted!

I fail to understand this contradiction. Is this a reflection of the difference between comrade Jacob and President Zuma? Do you, as president, think that Palestinians have no right to resist their occupation and dispossession? You even equate our resistance with the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity committed by the Israeli Occupation forces in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza.

Is it too much, comrade Jacob, for us, representatives of Palestinian Civil Society organizations to ask your government to sever all diplomatic ties with apartheid  Israel, and endorses not to say lead the growing global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel? Is that really too much to ask a democratic post-apartheid South Africa for?

Is this the embodiment of Fanon's prophecy about the "Pitfalls of National (Racial?) Consciousness?"  Is it because the Black Middle class which your government represents and which has taken power from the White Middle class is underdeveloped? Fanon, whom you  must have read while on the run from the apartheid police, says that this national middle class "has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace." Is this why you are prepared to kowtow to the South African Jewish community which "has been called one of the most tightly-knit in the world, overwhelmingly united in its support for Israel?"

Your government, Mr. President, turns a blind eye to the war crimes of its own citizens against Palestinians. The South African war criminal David Benjamin was allowed to freely move around South Africa and share his tactics of support and defence for the  Israeli Occupation Forces in its recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip with impunity. There are seventy other South Africans that are known to have links with the destruction of the Israeli Occupation Forces who enjoy the same impunity. It is left to individuals and civil society organizations in South Africa to take action against these criminals that should rightly be the task of the government.

Your post-apartheid government, Mr. President, unashamedly, supports the two-state solution: one for Palestinians (Muslim and Christians), and one for Jews. In other words, you support the re-birth of Bantustans, albeit in the Middle East this time. The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland every single inch of it?

Mr. President,

A politics based on narrow-minded, selfish pragmatism was rejected by all anti-apartheid forces, locally and internationally during the years of the anti-apartheid struggle. What was promoted, instead, was adherence to universal principles of equality and dignity.

I truly hope you will reconsider. I know that it is my constitutional right as a citizen of the New South Africa – which I am proud of – to address you directly. I do so to express my deep disagreement and dissatisfaction with your government's Middle East policy and its continued support for the apartheid policies of the Israeli government, given that this support undermines and actively harms the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.

Sincerely,
Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine

- Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

source: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/ and the author

PLUS, AFTER THIS ARTICLE, "TALKING POINTS ON THE NOW HISTORICAL CAMP LE JEUNE SPEECH" DON'T MISS IT!!!

WRITTEN BY John Walsh
At Obama’s Summer Place with Cindy: “Leadership” of Peace Movement, MIA

I spent but a short time with Cindy Sheehan as she carried her antiwar protest from an earlier time at Crawford, TX, to Martha’s Vineyard, vacation spot for Obama and many other Democrat Party elite. As Cindy remarked, the real story was not that she was protesting Obama’s wars but that the "leadership" of the peace movement did not support her protest. When the target was Bush in Crawford, she was all the rage with antiwar celebrities, but not so now that the target is Barack Obama. While there is considerable enthusiasm for her anti-Obama protest on the part of the rank and file in the anti-war movement, a refusal of its "leaders" to notify their members far and wide, high and low, crippled the action.

As a result of this betrayal, the numbers at Martha’s Vineyard were not large. But Cindy and her fellow anti-warriors were undeterred. While I was there, she mounted a spirited march down the road to Obama’s place, no more than a quarter mile away from where she stayed. The purpose was to present the President with a poster of Cindy bearing a signed plea to end the wars. The considerable armed force at the gate and the Secret Service officers would not even bring out the lowliest of staffers to receive the poster. Clearly the message from Obama was "Get lost, Cindy." And we were quickly told to move a considerable distance down the road. At least in Crawford it had been possible to demonstrate at the checkpoint to the site – not so at Obama’s place. Thus, did Obama greet a mother whose son was lost in the wars, which he continues and enlarges by the day.

The site chosen by Obama for his vacation appeared restful, even idyllic, that afternoon though the house itself was a considerable distance away from the road, hidden from view. But the image of the "antiwar" candidate lounging comfortably by the ocean, his family nearby, while ordering the deaths, by drones and assorted other killing instruments, of people half a world away, complete innocents, unknown to this man or his advisers, was disturbing indeed. What sort of man could do this? Does Obama bring his much ballyhooed "coolness" down a degree or two for cold blooded murder? Are these wars a matter of conscience or patriotism for Obama? If that were so, does one suppose in a future imperial war that Obama will urge his daughters to volunteer to die in some Muslim land any more than did Bush offer his daughters? Is there no shame to this poltician, Obama, who rose to high office on the yearning of so many for peace? How long will we allow the soothing words of this latter day Elmer Gantry to cover up his deeds?

Despite the silence of the antiwar misleaders, news of Cindy Sheehan’s presence did make the rounds of Cape Cod and the Islands. And who knows but that it might have gone further. Was Obama going to be caught unprepared? A cynic or a realist, or merely someone familiar with the Obama PR machine, might be pardoned for thinking that a plan was in place — and executed in the form of an anti-Cindy mom. And so it came to pass that, while there was no time for Cindy, the Obamas did make it a point to pay a highly publicized visit to another mom, Lisa X, who had lost her son in Obama’s AfPak war. This young man Obama had happened to encounter earlier this year at Camp Lejeune. The Cape Cod Times reported the meeting thus:

So, yesterday afternoon, the family drove from Yarmouthport to Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod. They waited about two hours at the base. … The Obamas entered. …. President Obama called them all by their first names, Lisa said. "It was like seeing a friend you hadn’t seen in a couple months," Lisa said of the nearly 10-minute meeting.

President Obama offered his condolences. "He told us whatever decisions he makes, he has Nick (and others serving) in mind," Lisa said. Earlier this year, Nicholas X met President Obama and shook his hand. The president gave a speech at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Shortly after, Nicholas decided he wanted to be part of the new offensive in Afghanistan, his father told the Times in July.

Lisa said her son called her right after the meeting. "He shook his (President Obama’s) hand and called me moments later and said, 'Mom, the President was amazing, his hand was the softest thing I’ve ever touched, like a baby’s bottom,’" Lisa recalled.

She made sure to tell President Obama that yesterday, drawing a laugh from him. Lisa X said her family is "still pretty numb and raw" over losing Nicholas. But she thought of his likely reaction to the family meeting the Obamas. "He is probably laughing hysterically … and proud."

Such an account should break your heart and stir your anger at this hypocritical politician. The more so if, as one might suspect, this encounter made cynical use of this grieving woman’s trust. That soft hand of Obama’s is soaked in considerable blood now, some of it Nicholas X’s, no less than the rough hands of Bush and Cheney. Obama’s message is clear. Sacrifice your child and endure without complaint the "numb and raw" emotions that come of your grief. And then Barack Obama will glad hand you for "nearly ten minutes" and get some good press — after you cool your heels for two hours awaiting the cool, great man. But protest the senseless death of your son, and you get the bum’s rush at Obama’s gate. Thus, does the erstwhile "antiwar candidate" (How silly that phrase sounds now!) treat Cindy Sheehan whose like he once called on to join him in making peace. And the "leaders" of the antiwar movement are nowhere to be seen or heard.

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.comhttp://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m57655&hd=&size=1&l=e

Link: dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/barack-obama-to-cindy-sheehan-get-lost/

Thoughts on Obama's Speech at Camp Lejeune, NC

Submitted by Dianne on February 28, 2009 – 7:43pm.

Here are a few "talking points" for activists in response to Barack Obama's speech last week [NYTimes link to transcription] which laid out his strategy for the "War on Terror."

1. In President Obama's Feb. 27 speech at Camp Lejeune, SC he spoke directly to soldiers about how they endured "tour after tour of duty," fighting "against tyranny and disorder." Nowhere in the speech is no mention of President Bush's justification for the drive to war–that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction." Of course we all know now that reason was concocted in order to sell the war! President Obama, who spoke out against the war when he was a state senator in Illinois, knows that too. Yet he goes on to say that the troops can begin to leave because the situation has improved: "the horrific sectarian killing of 2006 and 2007" has been "dealt a serious blow." But neither sectarian killing nor Al Queda existed in pre-U.S. invasion Iraq. They were the consequence of a U.S. occupation.

2. Later in the speech Obama, still addressing the troops, stated "We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein's regime and you got the job done. We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government-and you got the job done." This total justification for being cop of the world despite having not having even the fig leaf of any legal authority to take on that role is disturbing.

3. President Obama plans to remove U.S. combat troops within 19 months, leaving something on the order of 30,000-50,000 troops. He did not even mention that there are another 150,000 U.S. "contractors" who have been responsible for killing and torturing Iraqi civilians. The continuing presence of U.S. troops and hired guns will only fuel violence within Iraq and prevent the Iraqi people from rebuilding their country. U.S. troops and all "contractors" should withdraw on an expedited schedule in order to remove the #1 cause of the violence, the presence of an occupying force.

4. President Obama presented the U.S. occupation as a benign force that must stay in order to stabilize Iraq. What are the reasons for the instability? Obama lists these as displacement and poverty, government inability to deliver basic services and that some of its neighbors are working to undermine it. The picture that is painted is disingenuous. The primary reason for the instability is the U.S. invasion and destruction of the infrastructure, and tolerating looting following the invasion. (As then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked about the looting, "Stuff happens.) Instead of taking responsibility for what another administration did-or repudiating what was done–Obama paints a picture of a country that is poor. In fact, even following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, when there was a 10-year blockade imposed by both U.S. and European governments through the United Nations, the country's infrastructure was more functional than today, six years after Washington launched its illegal attack.

5. President Obama states that "America has a strategic interest-and a moral responsibility–to act. However he never states what that strategic interest, presumably it is to "help" the Iraqi people. However people all over the world–and even a great many Americans–realize that Washington desires to control the Middle East's oil and oil routes. That's why U.S. foreign policy supports the repressive and fundamentalist Saudi Arabian regime, that's why Bush really went into Iraq, that's why Washington is frightened at the rise of Iran's power in the region. (Many Americans might feel that since Washington caused such destruction, we have an obligation to stay and fix it as if we were the elephants that entered into the china shop. We certainly have a moral responsibility, but that doesn't mean training the army and police. Rather it means providing the reparations money necessary to resettle the displaced and rebuild what has been destroyed.)

6. President Obama has promised to expand the health care services for wounded soldiers. This is important, particularly because he acknowledges "the signature wounds of this war: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury…." But there is nothing in the speech to acknowledge that war trains soldiers to be violent. Many, when they return home, are unable to adjust, causing tremendous damage to themselves, their families and the entire society.

7. In fact, one of the saddest parts of Obama's speech is the section that states he is increasing the military. We cannot afford the tremendous economic and emotional burden of the military machine we currently have. If there is to be a serious attempt to rebuild the country's infrastructure, to expand job and educational opportunities, we need to cut the military budget, not expand it!

8. The Feb. 26th speech is a cover up. It covers up the real history of U.S. invasion and occupation, it covers up the main source of violence in Iraq, it pretends that the deaths of U.S. soldiers there was in the cause of freedom and friendship with the Iraqi people, it denies Washington's intentions.

9. Further the speech promises a comprehensive U.S. approach to the region and offers three elements: refocusing on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, developing a strategy to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and actively seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab world. Notice that there is no mention of Palestinians anywhere in the speech.

a. Given the deployment of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan (followed by at least 13,000 more) and the continued use of drones to bomb suspected al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, the first of the three elements seems to be more of the same process of invasion, occupation and destabilization that will bring more violence to those countries.
b. When the shah ruled Iran, the country received the latest U.S. military technology and was encouraged to develop nuclear weapons. But that was when Iran was safely within Washington's sphere of interest. Ironically, Washington's overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iran's fiercest enemy, along with the UN overthrow of the Taliban, (another thorn in their side), has increased Iran's power in the region. Given Iran's strength, a direct U.S. attack could have serious consequences as even President Bush understood when he nixed Israel's plans against Iran. Both in the case of Iran and Syria it is in Washington's interest to work out some diplomatic accommodation; here is where U.S. interests and those of Israel may divide.
c. Other administrations have aimed at an Israeli/Palestinian agreement and have been unable to do so. While the outline of such an agreement is easy enough to s–: Israel would pull back to the pre-1967 lines, refugees displaced since in 1948 would have the right of return (land or compensation), and there would be a recognition of Israel and Palestine as states–but it's clear that Israel prefers to maintain the fiction that there is no negotiating partner.

10. The problem with the February 27th speech is that it appears Obama is taking responsibility for continuing the U.S. policies he has inherited.That means it is incumbent on all elements in the antiwar and social justice movements to oppose this prettification of war, occupation, torture and destruction and demand that the wars be ended and the troops brought home.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2080

Now the latest news is that Rupert Murdoch is holding talks with Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to buy a 20 percent stake in his broadcaster Rotana Media. Rotana, which hosts Fox channels in Saudi Arabia via its TV network, owns rights to more than 2,000 Arabic movies and a large music library.

It is not clear if the deal will be for existing stock or new shares. The news shocked the Arab citizens even though Rotana is an entertainment business and has a negligible role in the news activities. The question that is circulating is why would Murdoch want to invest in Arab films and music production? And why would he marry his business with a Saudi one? Is it only an investment venture in the entertainment business, or has he got another futuristic agenda since the Kingdom Holdings, the investment vehicle for Prince Alwaleed, is already a major shareholder in News Corporation?

It has been said that Murdoch’s News Corporation is after the online video and music on demand service that rotana.net is currently offering live to viewers as a beta site, since this service is modelled on the US based TV hulu.com, that allows the American public to watch popular television series in full screen high definition over a broadband internet connection for free.

Hulu.com in the USA established only in 2007 is now considered one of the 40 most popular sites. Rotana.net as well has open access to its television, film and music archive throughout the GCC, the rumours go that Murdoch is going to change all that, and his investment plan is to control both Rotana and Hulu and charge for both services.

The majority of Arabs expressed their worries of Murdoch putting his foot in the Middle Eastern Media, since everyone knows his appetite for business expansion, he will never be satisfied with this one step, the minute he is in, he will keep expanding and putting his hands on more media outlets. The main complaint comes from the fact that the Arabs see Murdoch as a person who does not respect them, their faith, or heritage. The majority say that he is gambling with his money if he thinks that the Arabs will forget his far right wing political news machine, or his pro-Israeli stands, and the way his owned Fox News portrays Arabs and Muslims in a negative manner. Many even have already started to call for boycotting Rotana should such investment is to be finalised.

Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East are disgusted with the way Murdouch’s machine portrays them as terrorists, extremists, and militants who are always linked with Al Qaeda in every possible incident, and the fact that the Jewish people are always victims of anti-Semitism.

To make my point I guess I have to copy here Rupert Murdoch’s speech on receiving the American Jewish Committee National Human Relations Award held March 4, 2009 in New York City:

‘Thanks for those kind words, Hugh.

Over the years, some of my wildest critics seem to have assumed I am Jewish. At the same time, some of my closest friends wish I were.

So tonight, let me set the record straight: I live in New York. I have a wife who craves Chinese food. And people I trust tell me I practically invented the word “chutzpah”.

Ladies and gentleman, I thank you for having me tonight. I also want to thank Nelson Peltz … Michael Gould … and the many co-chairs for the time and effort they have put into this event. I am humbled by the honor you have given me – because this award speaks more to your good work than it does to mine.

Michael, I was fascinated to hear you talk about this history of this fine organization. The American Jewish Committee started in response to the persecution of Jews in Czarist Russia. And your response took a very American form: An organization that would speak up for those who could not speak for themselves.

In the century since your founding, the American Jewish Committee has become one of the world’s most influential organizations. Yet though your concerns begin with the safety and welfare of Jews, these concerns are anything but parochial. The reason for this is clear: You know that the best guarantee of the security of Jews anywhere is the freedom of people everywhere.

Your good work has helped bring real and lasting changes to our world. Unfortunately, while some threats have been defeated, new ones have taken their place. And these new threats remind us the AJC’s work is more vital than ever.

In Europe, men and woman who bear the tattoos of concentration camps today look out on a continent where Jewish lives and Jewish property are under attack – and public debate is poisoned by an anti-Semitism we thought had been dispatched to history’s dustbin.

In Iran, we see a regime that backs Hezbollah and Hamas now on course to acquire a nuclear weapon.

In India, we see Islamic terrorists single out the Mumbai Jewish Center in a well-planned and well-coordinated attack that looks like it could be a test run for similar attacks in similar cities around the world.

Most fundamentally, we see a growing assault on both the legitimacy and security of the State of Israel.

This assault comes from people who make clear they have no intention of ever living side-by-side in peace with a Jewish state – no matter how many concessions Israel might make. The reason for this is also clear: These are men who cannot abide the idea of freedom, tolerance, and democracy. They hate Israel for the same reasons they hate us.

At I speak, the flashpoint is Gaza. For months now, Hamas has been raining down rockets on Israeli civilians. Like all terrorist attacks, the aim is to spread fear within free societies, and to paralyze its leaders. This Israel cannot afford. I do not need to tell anyone in this room that no sovereign nation can sit by while its civilian population is attacked.

Hamas knows this better than we do. And Hamas understands something else as well: In the 21st century, when democratic states respond to terrorist attacks, they face two terrible handicaps.

The first handicap is military. It’s true that Israel’s conventional superiority means it could flatten Gaza if it wanted. But the Israeli Defense Forces – unlike Hamas – are accountable to a democratically chosen government.

No matter which party is in the majority, every Israeli government knows it will be held accountable by its people and by the world for the lives that are lost because of its decisions. That’s true for lives of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire. And it’s also true for the Israeli soldiers who may lose their lives defending their people.

In this kind of war, Hamas does not need to defeat Israel militarily to win a big victory. In fact, Hamas knows that in some ways, dead Palestinians serve their purposes even better than dead Israelis.

In the West we look at this and say, “It makes no sense.” But it does make sense.

If you are committed to Israel’s destruction, and if you believe that dead Palestinians help you score a propaganda victory, you do things like launch rockets from a Palestinian schoolyard. This ensures that when the Israelis do respond, it will likely lead to the death of an innocent Palestinian – no matter how many precautions Israeli soldiers take.

Hamas gets away with this, moreover, because they do not rule Gaza by the consent of those they claim to represent. They rule by fear and intimidation. They are accountable to no one but themselves.

This is the chilling logic of Gaza. And it helps explain why even a strong military power like Israel can find itself at a disadvantage on the ground.

The second handicap for Israel is the global media war. For Hamas, the images of Palestinian suffering – of people losing their homes, of parents mourning their dead children, of tanks rolling through the streets –create sympathy for their cause.

In a battle marked by street to street fighting, the death of innocents is all but inevitable. That is also true of Gaza. And these deaths have led some to call for Israel to be charged with war crimes by an international tribunal.

But I am curious: Why do we never hear calls for Hamas leaders to be charged with war crimes?

Why, for example, do we hear no calls for human rights investigations into Hamas gunmen using Palestinian children as human shields? Why so few stories on the reports of Hamas assassins going to hospitals to hunt down their fellow Palestinians? And where are the international human rights groups demanding that Hamas stop blurring the most fundamental line in warfare: the distinction between civilian and combatant?

I suspect the answer has to do with the same grim logic that leads Hamas to provoke a military battle it knows it cannot win. Whether Israel is ever found guilty of any war crime hardly matters. Hamas gets propaganda win simply by having the charge made often and loudly enough.

In this, Israel finds itself in much the same position the United States found itself in Iraq before the surge. There, al Qaeda realized that it was in its interests to provoke sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni – no matter what the cost to innocent Iraqis. That is the nature of terror. And what we are seeing in Gaza is just one front in this much larger war.

In the West, we are used to thinking that Israel cannot survive without the help of Europe and the United States. Tonight I say to you: Maybe we should start wondering whether we in Europe and the United States can survive if we allow the terrorists to succeed in Israel.

In this new century, the “West” is no longer a matter of geography. The West is defined by societies committed to freedom and democracy. That at least is how the terrorists see it. And if we are serious about meeting this challenge, we would expand the only military alliance committed to the defense of the West to include those on the front lines of this war. That means bringing countries such as Israel into NATO.

My friends, I do not pretend to have all the answers to Gaza this evening. But I do know this: The free world makes a terrible mistake if we deceive ourselves into thinking this is not our fight.

In the end, the Israeli people are fighting the same enemy we are: cold-blooded killers who reject peace … who reject freedom … and who rule by the suicide vest, the car bomb, and the human shield.

Against such an enemy, I will not second-guess the decisions of a free Israel defending her citizens. And I would ask all those who support peace and freedom to do the same.

I thank you for listening. I thank you for this award. And I thank you for all you are doing to make our world a safer and freer place.

After reading Murdoch’s speech I guess his policies are quite clear, and there is nothing ambiguous about them. It remains that the ball is in the Saudi Prince’s court.

The arguments against establishing a Jewish state in Palestine raised by anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews going back to the early years of the last century were well known and all have been proved correct. So it should not be a matter of surprise that Israel's legitimacy has not been accepted by the Palestinians and the other peoples of the region. It was advertised by Zionists worldwide as a colonial settler enterprise with pride, in fact, until such terminology fell out of favor. That it was established at a time when the rest of the world was engaged in a period of decolonization was even a further guarantee of its rejection and had it not been for the influence of its supporters in the US and Europe and the arms that flowed from that support, Israel, like French Algeria, would have become another episode in history. (And it is noteworthy that it was Israel's support for the French against the Algerian resistance that led to France being Israel's chief supplier of weaponry until 1967).

You are also well aware that to maintain Israel as the Sparta of the Middle East, the "Pro-Israel Lobby," has long held the US Congress in thrall, strangling what little is left of American democracy. Do you not recall writing how one president after another tried to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and how each one was forced by The Lobby to retire from the field defeated? And with each defeat, the theft of Palestinian land and the growth of the settlements continued. Who has paid the price for that?

As you have already assumed, I am against the existence of the state of Israel or a Jewish state by any other name which is based on the notion that a Jew from anywhere in the world has more of a right to live in what most of the world knew and accepted as Palestine than a Palestinian Arab who was born there or her or his family members. If that is not both immoral and racist, we need new definitions for those words. And yet you, apparently, do not find it so, and reject the opinions of those who do. (The notion that Israel or any country can be a homeland for a person not born there and who cannot trace a single relative that was born there is but another example of how Zionists have twisted the language to justify the unjust.)

Your desperation for an argument against the idea of a single state becomes apparent when you write that the French and the Germans did not agree to live together. Do you really believe there is any comparison to be made between the two situations. Are the French sitting on German land or vice versa?

I continue to be mystified at your continuing efforts to separate the settlers from those Jews living within the Green Line as if the majority of those in Israel proper are not as responsible for electing a series of professional killers as their prime ministers year after year, all of whom have expanded the settlements. There hasn't been a single poll of Israeli Jews that I have seen going back to 1988, in the early days of the first intifada, where half of those polled did not call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. How many settlers were there in 1988?

In your wonderful democracy, every able-bodied Jewish man or woman, with the exception of the chassdim, has served as an occupier in the West Bank or Gaza for the past 42 years. Are they not culpable? Yesterday, I watched on Al-Jazeera as Israeli soldiers fired waves of tear gas and some smelly green liquid on non-violent Palestinians who were marching to demonstrate the steel fence that cuts through their land at Ni'ilin and who then began targeting the Al-Jazeera reporter. Are we expected to embrace these young thugs wearing an Israeli uniform? Are those who hate them to be condemned and not the thugs and those who sent them there?

You repeatedly use the word peace but not once do you use the word justice. And that is what separates you and your fellow Zionists from the Palestinians and those who genuinely support them. The occupation bothers your conscience, your sense of idenity as an Israeli but how much does it affect your life? Ending the occupation no matter how it is arranged will bring you peace of mind and time to finish your memoirs. Now, try if you can, and imagine yourself as a Palestinian who has been under an Israeli jackboot all of his or her life. Would you be simply looking for peace, an absence of that Israeli jackboot, or would you be seeking and demanding justice?

Your conclusion expresses your confusion. You write that you want "Israel to be a state belonging to all its citizens, without distinction of ethnic origin, gender, religion or language; with completely equal rights for all," yet you assume there will be a "Hebrew-speaking majority" that will allow its "Arab-speaking citizens…to cherish their close ties with their Palestinian brothers and sisters…" If there is no distinction between one citizen and another, Jewish or Arab, how can you assume that the majority will continue to be Hebrew-speaking (or are you allowing for the possibility that Israel's Palestinian Arab population which already is largely bi-lingual will become the majority at which point Israel will no longer be a Jewish state?) If that is so, perhaps there is hope for you yet.

Hi,

Hope this may interest you.

Many readers have sent my thoughtful comments on my last

article. I am unable to answer them in detail. I am writing

my memoirs on top of my regular political and journalistic

work, and therefore can only answer laconically. Please

excuse.

Shalom, Salamaat,

uri

In a way, each of us has such a bed, into which we put everything new. Confronted with a novel situation, we tend to equate it with a situation we have known in the past.

In politics, this method is especially pervasive. It relieves us of the irksome necessity of studying an unfamiliar situation and drawing new conclusions.

Once, the pattern of Vietnam was applied to every struggle around the world - from Argentina to North Korea. Nowadays, the fashion points to South Africa. Everything resembles the struggle against apartheid, unless proven otherwise.

SINCE SENDING out last week’s article, "Tutu’s Prayer", I have been flooded with responses, some laudatory, some abusive, some thoughtful, some merely angry.

Generally, I don’t argue with my esteemed readers. I don’t want to impose my views, I just want to provide food for thought and leave it to the reader to form his or her own opinion.

This time I feel that I owe it to my readers to clear up some of the points I was trying to make and answer some of the objections. So here we go.

I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That’s entirely their right. I just don’t think that we have any common ground for discussion.

I would only like to point out that hatred is a very bad advisor. Hatred leads nowhere, but to more hatred. That, by the way, is a positive lesson we can draw from the South African experience. There they overcame hatred to a remarkable extent, largely thanks to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archbishop Tutu, where people admitted their past offenses.

One thing is certain: hatred does not lead towards peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel’s occupation, have lost sight of this.

Peace is made between enemies, after war, in which awful things invariably happen. Peace can be made and maintained between peoples who are prepared to live with each other, respect each other, recognize the humanity of each other. They don’t have to love each other.

Describing the other side as monsters may be useful in waging war, but singularly unhelpful in waging peace.

When I receive a missive that is dripping with hatred of Israel, that portrays all Israelis (including myself, of course) as monsters, I fail to envision how the writer imagines peace. Peace with monsters? Angels and monsters living side by side in peace and harmony in one state, hating each other’s guts?

The view of Israel as a monolithic entity composed of racists and brutal oppressors is a caricature. Israel is a complex society, struggling with itself. The forces of good and evil, and many in between, are locked in a daily battle on many different fronts. The settlers and their supporters are strong, perhaps getting stronger (though I doubt it), but are far - even in their own view – from a decisive victory. Neve Gordon, for example, has been left unmolested in his post at Ben-Gurion University, because any attempt to remove him would have caused a public outcry.

I ALSO have no argument with those who want to abolish the State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right to want to dismantle, let’s say, the USA or France, neither of which has an unblemished past.

Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back some 62 years and start anew.

What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the proposals, like those for a "One State" solution, sound like euphemisms. If one believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State of Palestine or a State of Happiness - why not say so openly?

Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott?

The French and the Germans did not agree to live in one joint state, though the differences between them are incomparably smaller than those between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians. Instead, they set up a European Union, composed of nation-states. Some 50 years ago I called for a similar Semitic Union, including Israel and Palestine. I still do.

Anyway, there is no sense in arguing with those who pray for the disappearance of the sovereign State of Israel, rather than for the appearance of the sovereign State of Palestine at its side.

THE REAL argument is among those who want to see peace between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: how can it be achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil manner. My debate with Neve Gordon is in this framework.

The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to peace is to exert pressure from the outside.

I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The question is: pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?

The first answer is, I believe, the right one. That’s why I hope that President Barack Obama will publish a detailed peace plan with a fixed timetable and apply the immense powers of persuasion of the USA to get both sides to agree. I don’t think that this is politically possible without the support of a large part of Israeli society (and, by the way, of the US Jewish community).

Some readers have lost all hope in Obama. That is, without doubt, premature. Obama has not surrendered to Binyamin Netanyahu - indeed, it is quite conceivable that the opposite is happening. The struggle is on, it is a hard struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help Obama’s peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel, but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.

It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: to isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11 years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements, this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision, this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their involvement with the "Separation Fence" that is being built on Palestinian land and whose main purposeis to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a splendid example: a focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling of the International Court.

I think that far more can be done by a concentrated national and international campaign. A central office should be set up to direct this effort throughout the world against clear and specific targets. Such an effort could be helped by world public opinion, which recoils from the idea of boycotting the State of Israel, and not only because of the memory of the Holocaust, but will identify itself with action against the occupation and the oppression.

I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements, indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there, out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before their eyes the false hope that a world-wide boycott would bring Israel to its knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the occupation and achieve peace.

This is especially important because our task in Israel today is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace.

TO REMOVE any misconceptions about myself, let me state as clearly as possible where I stand:

I am an Israeli.

I am an Israeli patriot.

I want my state to be democratic, secular, and liberal, ending the occupation and living at peace both with the free and sovereign State of Palestine that will come into being next to it, and with the entire Arab world.

I want Israel to be a state belonging to all its citizens, without distinction of ethnic origin, gender, religion or language; with completely equal rights for all; a state in which the Hebrew-speaking majority will retain its close ties with the Jewish communities around the world, and the Arab-speaking citizens will be free to cherish their close ties with their Palestinian brothers and sisters and the Arab world at large.

Netherlands/ The Hague, Amira Al-Qirim, a Palestinian girl aged 15, a victim and survivor of the Israeli massacre in Gaza last January, held a press conference together with her lawyer Gilles Devers in The Hague, in front of the building of the International Criminal Court, ICC, during which she stated: “I am here to present a complaint and to hand to the office of prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in the ICC a file requesting an investigation into the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza Strip in which my father, my brother aged 14, and my sister aged 16, all civilians, were murdered by the IOF in the Tel Al-Hawa area south of Gaza City”.

Amira’s lawyer, Gilles Devers from the Court of Lyon (France) said “This was a crime against humanity, and we are here to raise the case to the International Criminal Court, against the Israeli politicians and the military leaders who must take responsibility of what they did. They murdered hundreds and injured thousands more of civilians”.

Amira herself was injured seriously, she survived and arrived in France for medical treatment.
Over the period of 27 December 2008 until the ceasefire of 18 Jan 2009, the criminal Israeli IOF deliberately dropped on Gaza more than one million and a half tons of explosives during their so-called “Operation Cast Lead”. With over 1.5 million inhabitants, Gaza is the most crowded area in the whole world. The IOF executed Palestinians in their houses in cold blood, either by shooting them directly or by launching missiles and rockets at them. The cold-blooded executions of these “prisoners of war” is clear violation to the international humanitarian treaties and conventions.

Since February 2009, the attorney general of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is making a “preliminary study” of the charges of war crimes against Israel. According to his press office, the attorney general has received more than 360 letter, petitions from persons, association of human rights, and casualties in this regard:

The Israeli military massacre in Gaza had the purpose of ethnic cleansing of the civilians and murdering politicians in Gaza. According to the former cabinet chief of Ehud Olmert,  the criminal Ehud Barak, and the chief of the Israeli intelligence, Yuval Diskin, the military Operation “Cast Lead” had the purpose of putting an end to some political activists, Palestinian resistance activists and their families as the only solution to “decrease the terror” of revenge against Israel. The war criminals stated that the murder of the families of Palestinian political activists and resistance fighters was very important for the security of Israel. By murdering their families, Israel would guarantee that no revenge would be possible in the future. Another motive for this willfully planned crime was for it to secure votes for its organizers.

During the Israeli war crime in Gaza, most of the murdered and the causalities were civilians. Israel dropped phosphor bombs on civilians, and the victims have been found to be contaminated with depleted Uranium.

Simultaneously, and in solidarity with Amira Al-Qirim, another press conference was held by children in Gaza on Tuesday September 1 2009 in the “Small Journalist Club”, during which they demanded that the International Criminal Court and peace-loving people around the world “criminalize the Israeli occupation” and its officials, and sue them before to the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes against the civilians of Gaza.

The children demanded an international intervention to lift the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and to provide Gaza with the humanitarian supplies which can guarantee a human life for the children there, just like all other children around the world.

During the conference in Gaza, the children accused Israel of committing war crimes, genocide and of targeting the Palestinian people. The children called for international protection for them and for an end to the the violations of their rights.

During the Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza, the so called “Operation Cast Lead”, over 1400 Palestinians were murdered and thousands more were injured, among them over 420 child who were murdered, and over 1600 more children are among the causalities.

Source: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/01/a-palestinian-child-against-israel-at-the-icc

Cindy's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

WRITTEN By JOHN V. WALSH August 28, 2009 "Counterpunch" — Cindy Sheehan will be at Martha's Vineyard beginning August 25 a short way from Obama's vacation paradise of the celebrity elite but very far from the Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq where the body bags and cemeteries fill up each day as Obama's wars rage on. She will remain there from August 25 through August 29 and has issued a call for all peace activists to join her there. For those of us close by in the New England states and in New York City, there would seem to be a special obligation to get to Martha's Vineyard as soon as we can.

A funny thing has happened on Cindy Sheehan's long road from Crawford, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard. Many of those who claim to lead the peace movement and who so volubly praised her actions in Crawford, TX, are not to be seen. Nor heard. The silence in fact is deafening, or as Cindy put it in an email to this writer, "crashingly deafening." Where are the email appeals to join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or "Progressive" Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink? Or United for Peace and Justice. (No wonder UFPJ is essentially closing shop, bereft of most of their contributions and shriveling up following the thinly veiled protest behind the "retirement" of Leslie Cagan.) And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except slavish loyalty to the "other" War Party. And of course sundry "socialist" organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not be front and center. These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog of Obama's wars.

Just to be sure, this writer contacted several of the "leaders" of the "official" peace movement in the Boston area – AFSC, Peace Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others. Not so much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort – although the GRP at least posted a notice of the action. (It is entirely possible that some of these organizations might mention Cindy's action late enough and quickly enough so as to cover their derrieres while ensuring that Obama will not be embarrassed by protesting crowds.) We here in the vicinity of Beantown are but a hop, skip and cheap ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard. Same for NYC. So we have a special obligation to respond to Cindy's call.

However, not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at Antiwar.com are on the job, and its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday on the hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the "liberal" establishment. (1) As Raimondo pointed out, Rush Limbaugh captured the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus:

"Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.' Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

Limbaugh has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing how well each of the war parties can spot the other's hypocrisy. But Cindy Sheehan is no one's dupe; she is a very smart and very determined woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.

Obama is an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party and Identity Politics. Why exactly the peace movement has caved to Obama is not entirely clear. Like the single-payer movement, it is wracked by spinelessness, brimming with reverence for authority and a near insatiable appetite to be "part of the crowd." Those taken in by Obama's arguments that the increasingly bloody and brutal AfPak war is actually a "war of necessity," should read Steven Walt's easy demolition of that "argument." (2) Basically Obama's logic is the same as Bush's moronic rationale that "We are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here." There is a potential for "safe havens for terrorists," as the Obamalogues and neocons like to call them, all over the world; and no one can possibly believe the US can invade them all. However, the ones which Israel detests or which allow control of oil pipelines or permit encirclement of China and Russia will see US troops sooner or later.

The bottom line is that everyone in New England and NYC who is a genuine antiwarrior should join the imaginative effort of Cindy Sheehan in Obamaland this week and weekend. We owe it to the many who will otherwise perish at the hands of the war parties of Bush and Obama.

1.See: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/
Or go to Antiwar.com and make a contribution while you are there. It's almost as good as CounterPunch.com.
2.See:http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com He welcomes comments, and he looks forward to seeing crowds of CounterPunchers at Martha's Vineyard this week and weekend.

===

War Coverage and the Obama Cult
Why we aren't getting the real story
by Justin Raimondo
August 24, 2009
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/

There was a time when Cindy Sheehan couldn't go anywhere without having a microphone and a TV camera stuck in front of her. As she camped out in front of George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, mourning the death of her son Casey in Iraq and calling attention to an unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable war, the media created in her a symbolic figure whose public agony epitomized a growing backlash against the militarism and unmitigated arrogance of the Bush administration. It was a powerful image: a lone woman standing up to the most powerful man on earth in memory of her fallen son.

Touting "an exclusive interview with Cindy Sheehan" on Good Morning America, four years ago ABC anchorman Charles Gibson intoned: "Standing her ground. She lost her son in Iraq, she opposes the war, now she's camped out at President Bush's ranch and says she won't leave until he meets with her."

The level of coverage only increased in the coming days and weeks. As Cindy continued her vigil, Gibson enthused:

"All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch."

Flashing across their television screens, viewers saw the headline "MOM ON A MISSION: IS ANTIWAR MOVEMENT GROWING?" as Gibson averred:

"This morning a war of words. All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch. But is anyone in the White House feeling the heat?"

That was then. This is now: in an interview [.mp3] with Chicago's WLS radio on Aug. 18, Gibson was asked whether his network planned to cover Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard, where she is protesting the escalation of the war in Afghanistan while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson's answer:

"Enough already."

It is one thing to decide war protests aren't newsworthy, that they're just the irrelevant emanations of a fringe element radically out of step with the 99 percent of the country that's marching happily off to war. That, however, is very far from being the case.
Back in 2005, Cindy represented a minority that was on its way to becoming a majority. Today, she starts off her renewed vigil with over half of the American people agreeing with her that the Afghan war isn't worth it.

Yet Gibson's announced news blackout is being observed well nigh universally: aside from Rush Limbaugh, only the generally conservative Boston Herald, the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, a daytime MSNBC news show, and a few blogs bothered noticing Sheehan's determination to be "an equal opportunity vacation disruption," as the Herald writer put it. The bitterness of conservatives over the obvious double standard is expressed by Limbaugh in terms of the usual partisan rhetoric:

"When she's out there revving up people against George W. Bush, it's, let's cover her 24/7, let's make sure we have our cameras out there outside Bush's ranch when she's there, whatever she's saying, whatever she's doing, if she goes down and meets with Hugo Chavez, our cameras will be there. They could not get enough of her. Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.'

Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

While Cindy is nobody's pawn – as she is proving by her actions – the general point Limbaugh is making seems all too true. So why isn't he cheering?

After all, what did this pro-war blowhard have to say about Cindy back when Gibson was breathlessly broadcasting her every utterance? Well, he basically said she was a traitor and a fraud, comparing her to Bill Burkett, who provided CBS with phony "evidence" purporting to show Bush's failure to show up for National Guard training. "Her story," he said, "is nothing more than forged documents." Sheehan's crusade, he claimed, was all part of a "coordinated" plan by the "far Left," which he seemed to equate with the Democratic Party.

In the beginning of this year, when a caller asked "where are all the … Cindy Sheehans, the Code Pink Tuscaderos [sic] of the Democratic Party" now that Obama is in the White House, Limbaugh replied:

"Well, frankly, that doesn't bother me. I had enough of Cindy Sheehan to last me a lifetime. She was always a nonfactor anyway. I mean, Cindy Sheehan, this is a poor woman who's lost her mind, and then that fact was used by the Drive-By Media to further drive her crazy into making everybody and her think that she was relevant, only because she was willing to accept enough money from a California PR film to build and occupy a little shack across the road from Bush's house down in Crawford, Texas."

Aside from the fact that he has no idea whether or not she has the same media handlers – the True Majority group, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, hired Fenton Communications to handle Cindy's media relations and thanked her when she (prematurely) announced her "retirement" from peace activism – one has to wonder what Rush is complaining about. Gibson is doing just what the bombastic radio commentator always wanted him to do: ignoring Cindy's antiwar protest.

Can't we all just get along? On the higher levels of the commentariat, the "Left" and the "Right" are slow-dancing in perfect harmony whenever Obama plays a martial tune. Now that the Obamaite think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, are holding joint conferences with Rush's neocon buddies – Bill Kristol and his Foreign Policy Initiative – hailing Obama's Afghan "surge" and proffering advice on how best to go about it, Rush ought to relax. He and Keith Olbermann can now march together, arm in arm, into the glorious war-torn future, united in steadfastly ignoring the Cindy Sheehans of this world.

We, of course, are not ignoring her passionate protest, including in our news section – but, then again, we don't fit into the Left/Right dichotomy that the "mainstream" media is stuck in and has a financial interest in promoting. With Keith Olbermann capturing the self-described "left-wing" pro-Obama demographic, and Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly going after the anti-Obama crowd, they're divvying up the demographic pie, with Fox News settling for the older crowd, and MSNBC going for the younger and more "hip" set.
Here at Antiwar.com it isn't about demographics or Obama, and it certainly isn't about the two major parties, both of which now accept the central premise of America's wars: that the U.S. has both the right and means to police the world.

In rejecting that onerous principle, we stand outside the bipartisan "consensus" and the whole ersatz Left/Right division of American opinion – whose proponents exhibit a curious unity when it comes to the vital question of foreign policy.

As much as Limbaugh and his right-wing brothers and sisters railed against the "liberal" media for undermining the war effort, they never really questioned the factual basis of the administration's case for invading Iraq: that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," that he was on the verge of attacking his neighbors, and that he had proven links to the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, they reported these claims uncritically – even as they were being debunked right here on this Web site.

The lesson of all this is simple: the "mainstream" media simply can't be trusted. That's why newspapers are losing circulation at a rapid clip, and television news is fading in importance. It's not the Internet that's killing off the sainted mandarins of the "mainstream" – it's their role as transmission belts for official propaganda, whether it be from the government or the partisan opposition. They're shills, and everybody knows it.

That's why Antiwar.com is more important than ever – and isn't it ironic that we're clinging to life by a very thin thread, just at the moment when we're needed the most?

Oh, well, life is like that, you know. I never expected it to be easy. Yet even I have to admit that this fundraising campaign is beginning to scare me: we're way behind where we were at this point last time around, to say nothing of last year. The number of contributors is equivalent, and even shows signs of increasing, but the amounts are smaller by as much as half. We all are facing some hard economic times. It just means we'll have to extend our fundraising campaign by as much as a week – hopefully not more. But we'll do what we have to do to stay afloat.

If you haven't given, or even if you have, I want to extend this appeal to all my readers, even the ones who don't agree with some (or much) of what I have to say in this space. You may love Obama or you may bitterly oppose him: whatever. You need to realize, however, that this isn't about him. It's about maintaining a skeptical approach to the foreign policy currently being conducted by those geniuses in Washington, who think they know all there is to know to bring order to a disorderly world.

It's about maintaining a wonderfully complete source of hard news, as well as an outlet for dissenting opinions – often colorfully expressed – in an age of ideological conformity and bland "pragmatism."

It's about maintaining the tradition of independent journalism in a world where "journalists" are bought and sold like the ladies of Amsterdam's red-light district and events are viewed through a partisan prism.

source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23379.htm

hat tip: Karin

From the International Campaign for Releasing Abducted Members of Parliament (Free PLC) site:

Three years have passed since PLC members were abducted by Israeli occupation forces before the eyes and the hearing of the world in a dangerous precedent as a political crime and in atrocious violation of the principles of international law and Geneva Fourth Convention, besides trespassing the rules of democracy and principles of respecting the people's wills.

Israeli occupation insists on violating the dignity of democracy and even trying it through its persistence in abducting the MPs and prosecuting them and going too far in extending their unlawful imprisonment after its end with the aim of keeping them behind the prison bars during all the parliamentary term.

Out of our care for peace among people, our respect for their will to choose their representatives and for consolidating the rules of the free democratic and parliament action, our decisive rejection of the abducting and trying of MPs which has been a trial of democracy and abducing of its consequences, our awareness of the fact that the place of those abducted MPs in not jail but their parliamentary seats for which the Palestinian people have chosen them through the ballot boxes, we have decided to conduct the International campaign for freeing the abducted MPs in continuation of efforts exerted in defense of this cause and to unite the abilities of the parliamentarians and freemen of the world so as to ensure the dawn of freedom for the abducted MPs.

In this campaign we are keen on sending the following telegrams:

First: our decisive rejection of the Israeli piracy and harsh intervention in the internal Palestinian affairs and the incessant attempts to change the Palestinian political map through the abducting of MPs and blowing up the democratic choice.

Second: the necessity of the World Community's movement to protect human values and democratic morals and confront Israeli violation of International conventions and agreements.

Third: inviting all parliamentarians and free personalities of the world to join the international campaign for freeing the abducted MPs and bear their responsibility in defending democracy and to form a world public opinion pressing for releasing the PLC members and incriminating this serious Israeli policy.

Out of our desire to see peace prevailing all over the world, our keenness to have mutual respect among all the peoples of the Earth and our observance of the results of the democratic process and the peaceful exchange of authority, we declare our rejection of kidnapping of the elected Palestinian members of parliament which has been a dangerous precedent and an atrocious violation of international laws and conventions.

We warn that this silence towards such crime means directing a deathblow to democracy, social peace and world peace, it means a threat to stability in the world and empowering the law of the jungle which trespasses civilized development and modern human regulations.

We hereby call on the world community the human rights organizations and all those who are able to practice pressure an the Israeli occupation to act seriously and effectively for the prompt release of the symbols of Palestinian legitimacy, the members of parliament.

And jointly let us act for the freeing of Palestinian members of parliament kidnapped in the prison of Israeli occupation.

http://www.freeplc.org/ (in English and Arabic)
http://www.freeplc.org/en/home.php?page=c2hvd1RocmVhZA==&id=NA==&type=Zml4ZWQ=

SIGN THE SUPPORT DOCUMENT: http://www.freeplc.org/en/home.php?page=Z3Vlc3RCb29r

See also: for background http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=10670&CategoryId=2

I also strongly condemn and reject the interference of the Israeli military censorship, who tries to impose his dirty mission on newspapers, websites and blogs, published outside Israel with continued terror, bullying and intimidation done by many front organizations and individuals of lacking intellect, who call themselves “glorious” names “Fancy Titles” but who in fact work for Israel and the IDF censorship office in Beit Agron, and who also get paid by them.

I strongly condemn the military censorship imposed on my correspondence with my homeland Palestine, by Israeli military “security” in the post office, in the West part of occupied Jerusalem, people who open and empty my packages of it’s content, destroying my videos which shows the crimes of the military occupation in Palestine. (See a copy of a letter from the Post office informed me that my letter had arrived at their office opened and damages).

Yesterday I was forwarded an email been sent by one of these “Fancy Titles”  people, IDF fronts abroad, who tried bully a German website which translated and published my article into removing my article, thus de-facto imposing the IDF censorship in a foreign publication. See the e-mail attached as a PDF. This slanderous and menacing E-mail was sent to German government ministers in copy. The writers of this badly written E-mail questioned the validity of the information I mention in my article, and the validity of my sources. While the Email was sent to another website and only forwarded to me, I thought it appropriate to answer these small-time bullies because the article is mine. My response to the threat Email sent to LinkeZeitung as a PDF. I will translate both e-mails as soon as I can.

As a journalist I know how to get direct access to ministers and government offices; I have documented the crimes perpetrated by Israel since my family left their homeland in the north of Palestine, today called Israel, 61 years ago.

After the criticism of  the “Fancy Titles” people against my latest article body snatching by the IDF and their partners in crime at Abu Kabir, I have decided to publicize each crime with further details to show that Israel is a state of cutthroats and thieves next to being a criminal occupier.

I am also sure that all the governments know what happened to the Palestinians since 1948 until today, and that Israel is established on the destruction and genocide of the Palestinian nation. But while these governments are paralyzed and unable to do much about about the Israeli genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the violations of the international humanitarian laws because of their thorough infiltration by zionist elements, I have decided to go ahead with my work exposing further details about the Israeli crimes, whether the criminals and their allies and frontmen like what I write or not.

I will not start from the story of my relative murdered and autopsied. First I will start presenting the full details of the murder of three children and the abduction of their bodies and autopsy which I mentioned before. Here is the Press Release issued by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights concerning this crime.

here is the testimony in Arabic by the director of Al-Shifa’a hospital in Gaza as PD F.

(I was not able to translate it because of the horrible things which are described. Perhaps the people “Fancy Titles” and the IDF military censorship will be able to translate it)  I hope that the bullies from “Fancy Titles” people will enjoy it).

Below is a Press release which I received in 2002

Press Release

New evidence in case of three Palestinian children unlawfully killed by Israeli forces

Ref: 11/2002

Date: 30 January 2002

New evidence has been obtained demonstrating the excessive and disproportionate use of force by Israeli forces against three Palestinian children killed last month. According to recent statements made by the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces used “Fletchette” shells (shells containing dart-like shrapnel which is fired over a large area upon impact) in the incident when the three children were killed.

PCHR, the legal representative of the victims’ families, expresses its serious concerns regarding this case and reiterates its call for the international community and the United Nations to initiate a full, independent and impartial investigation into the case, to bring to justice those responsible and to provide effective reparations, including adequate compensation for the families of the victims.

On Sunday, 30 December 2001, Israeli forces fired artillery shells at three Palestinian children north of Beit Lahia, killing them. The victims, all from Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza, were:

• Ahmed Mohammed Banat, age of 15.
• Mohammed ‘Abdel-Rahman El-Madhoun, age of 16
• Mohammed Ahmed Lubbad, age of 17.

At approximately 17:40 on that day, an Israeli tank positioned in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement, north of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, fired four artillery shells at a Palestinian agricultural area, under full control of the Palestinian National Authority, approximately 1200m south of the settlement.

Then, Israeli forces opened fire at the area from heavy and medium machine guns. Approximately 30 minutes later, the Israeli forces issued a statement claiming that they had killed three gunmen who were attempting to enter “Elli Sinai” settlement. Later, the Israeli forces stated that the three children were attempting to plant bombs in the area. A later statement from the Israeli military asserted that the children were armed with knives.

The Israeli authorities did not immediately release the bodies of the three victims and did not issue information regarding their identities or ages. Three families from Sheikh Radwan neighborhood notified PCHR about the disappearance of three of their children while they were returning home from a visit to a friend in Beit Lahia.

This raised fears that the three children might be the victims killed by Israeli forces. On 2 January 2002, PCHR, through an Israeli lawyer, Andre Rosenthal, sent a message to the Israeli military legal advisor, requesting the recovery of the three bodies to the Palestinian National Authority in order to be identified, and called for an investigation into the case. The bodies were handed over to the Palestinian National Authority on the same day, but no investigation was initiated by the Israeli military.

PCHR has continued to follow up the case internationally and within Israel. On 8 January 2002, PCHR sent appeals to John Dugard, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, including Palestine; Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur for Summary, Arbitrary, and Extra-Judicial Executions; and Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict. PCHR requested that they take immediate steps to ensure a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident is conducted, and that other cases of possible willful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated, with appropriate legal action taken.

In addition to following the case through its lawyer in Israel, PCHR coordinated with the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and Physicians for Human Rights, providing the two organizations with information, in order for them to pressure inside Israel for an investigation into the case. In its letter to the two organizations, PCHR stated its initial comments and conclusions regarding the incident:

 

• The children were fired at from a significant distance, when they had posed no threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers.
• The three children were extra-judicially killed since no efforts were made to arrest them.
• The victims were unarmed civilians under the age of 18.
• The bodies were taken to the Legal Medicine Institute in Abu Kabir without the approval of their families and without a court decision.
• An autopsy conducted by Palestinian officials indicated that the bodies had been mutilated and that one of the victims had been trampled by a large vehicle.

Following a request by Member of Knesset Tamar Jabotnisky, the Israeli parliamentary foreign and security committee held a session on 23 January 2002 to address this case. Representatives of the PCATI and Physicians for Human Rights attended the session.

In his statement before the committee, the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip revealed new information which supports the conclusion that the children were willfully killed.

His statement can be summed up in the following points:

• At approximately 17:48 on 30 December 2001, three suspects were noticed in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement. The officer in command of a tank fired four artillery shells at the three, killing them.
  
• One of the bodies was then run over by the tank. The tanks shells fired contained nails (flechettes) which were scattered as far as 100m away from the point of impact.

In his statement before the committee, Director of the Legal Medicine Institute (Abu Kabir) explained that the victims died having sustained injuries inflicted by the nails in the shells and that one of the bodies had then been run over by a tank. This information further supports the conclusion that the killings were willful and a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.

The Israeli military representative also produced video footage before the committee showing that the victims were positioned at a significant distance from the Israeli military position. It is PCHR’s opinion that this information collectively indicates that the Israeli military extrajudicially killed the three, and used excessive and disproportionate force. All evidence indicated that the victims had not posed any threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers, that the soldiers had not resorted to less lethal force as required by international standards and had made no attempts to arrest the suspects prior to opening fire. The video footage also reaffirmed that the victims were unarmed contrary to claims made by the Israeli military.

The session was adjourned, to be reconvened later this week, pending receipt of the report of the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute on the case.

In light of these developments, PCHR asserts:

 

The killing of the three children was willful and extra-judicial in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, and that Israeli forces have full legal responsibility for their deaths, including with respect to the provision of compensation to the victims families, in accordance with international law.

In immediately resorting to the use of artillery shells despite no threat having been posed to the lives of the soldiers, the Israeli forces employed excessive and disproportionate force.

It was not the first time that Israeli forces have employed “Fletchette” shells against Palestinian civilians. A number of Palestinian civilians have been killed or injured by such shells, including when no threat was posed to the lives of Israeli soldiers, according to PCHR’s investigations.

Despite all these facts, Israeli forces have not initiated a full and proper investigation into this case or many other similar cases. The autopsy of the bodies took place at the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute without the approval of the victims’ families and without a court decision – according to the director of the institute, the bodies of the victims were brought to the institute without having been identified in contravention of Israeli law.

The video footage showing the killing of the three children should be made public.

The international community and the United Nations must call for a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident, and that other cases of possible wilful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated.

The use of such shells against a civilian population is unlawful under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The Israeli military commander also confirmed that an Israeli tank ran over the body of one of the victims.

SOURCE: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/08/28/fancy-title-people-and-the-idf-against-journalists

Palin Sidetracks Scrutiny of Obama's Communitarian Plan

Yes, President Obama is a socialist. He's a free trade communist. He's a free trade capitalist, too. He's Christian, he's Muslim, he cares about people and he has lots of hope. Obama is all of this, and much, much more. Obama knows that all opposing economic, religious and social theories were finally resolved in one perfect solution, called communitarianism.

"Fortunately, many, including many liberals, have come to view as mistaken a liberalism with such a strong principle of neutrality and avoidance of public discussion of the good. Some think the change a result of the critique provided by communitarianism; others see it as a clarification of basic liberal philosophy. Regardless, a refined view has emerged that begins to create an overlap between liberalism and communitarianism." http://defsi.typepad.com/deafening_silence/2009/08/under-the-skin-of-health-care-reform-dr-ezekiel-emanuel-in-his-own-words-pt-2.html

The communitarian theory of Community Rights is shared by every appointee in Obama's administration. From his Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske (who created the COMPASS database when he was a Grants Director at COPS) to his new Health care advisor (Zeke Emanuel, who advises we withhold medical care from citizens unable to "participate"), the Obama administration follows the Clinton and Bush leadership into merging the former United States under a global justice system rejecting US constitutional supremacy in favor of the supremacy of Communitarian Law.

"Emanuel's thesis adviser at Harvard was Prof. Michael Sandel, a noted communitarian who has argued that our political debates bracket gut-level values to our detriment. Emanuel writes in the tradition of a communaritan who believes that procedural liberalism — the reigning philosophy of government today — does not allow for priorities among health care services because it "cannot appeal to a conception of the good." Emanuel writes: "But without appealing to a conception of the good, it is argued, we can never establish priorities among health care services and define basic medical services." Emanuel sketches out a "civic Republicanism" telos — that is — our health care decisions as a society should be yoked to a system that "promote[s] the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic." He notes that such a system would deny "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." " http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/08/the_death_panel.php

The "change" Obama promised to bring to America is entirely based in his expert, high level training in communitarian thinking. Communitarianism, like communism, socialism and capitalism, has a history and a philosophy that can be verified by a second grader. A simple google search for the word "communitarian" produces millions of returns. With more mainstream and credible sources describing the Obama administration as communitarian every day now, you'd think the Americans would be all over it and wanting to know more. Every day I do see a few more who are interested and studying it, but, (and especially since Palin jumped in) for the most part, Americans are not even considering it. They ignore it at their national peril.

This isn't the International Jewish Banker's theory or the Illuminati and Alien agendas, although many would hope that you think it is, just so that they can easily discount you and laugh at your racism, ignorance and gullibility. The Communitarian Philosophy is well documented in upper academia and insider news reports since 1990, it's the topic of numerous grad school programs and international legal seminars; it's just not often discussed in view of the "unwashed masses." They have a Communitarian Network at George Washington University in D.C. They have extremely well connected leaders and mentors, like Dr. Amitai Etzioni, MaryAnn Glendon and Dr. John McNight, as well as an entire active network of Community activists (including Michelle and Barack Obama). The Communitarian Network published a Platform, it's signed by real people (some of the names you may even recognize) and they've published thousands of documents about their agenda. Dr. Etzioni isn't called a "guru" and the "everything expert" because he wrote one or two unread, obscure books. His latest book, "Security First" is quoted as an expert source in daily Pentagon briefings (and I still think I should get daily Pentagon briefings too, since I am the one who alerted a Pentagon intelligence analyst to Etzioni's Palmach terrorist ties to the Israeli Defense Force. As of June 2008, Etzioni was not even in the US Army's database of known international terrorists operating inside the USA!).

It should come as no surprise that the Communitarian Update #36 begins thus:

"The first ever workshop on bioethics from a communitarian perspective will take place at George Washington University on 6/5/2001. Papers by Ezekiel Emmanuel (A Communitarian Perspective on Research), Mark Kuczewski (Organ Donation and the Common Good), Leonard Fleck (A Communitarian Perspective on Health Resource Allocation), and Eric Meslin (Human Cloning). Participation is by invitation only. Send nominations to Joanna Cohn at comnet@gwu.edu with "bioethics" in the subject line." http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/communitarian_update_n36.html

In Europe, the terms for communitarian legal supremacy over national courts and political systems exists in thousands of EU documents, national integration departmental procedures and established free trade (WTO) case law. To say there is no evidence for communitarianism or that the theory is benign or ineffective is a lie of epic proportions. The reason the Anti Communitarian League website grew to become such a huge research site is because there's more evidence for communitarianism than one person has time to gather in one lifetime. How much longer can it remain so neglected and unimportant? How many communitarian accompanying laws must be passed before the American people are allowed to examine the principles it upholds?

Obama's communitarian mentors came to the USA from the 1850s to the 1990s to "shore up the moral, social and political environment." They continue to come here from the UK, Europe, Israel, the Soviet Union, the Vatican, the City of London, Brussels, the Hague and Communist China, advising US officials to make significant illegal changes to our political system. Communitarians open doors formerly locked and guarded by We the People under state and federal constitutional law. They help formerly free state citizens to advance harmoniously into a new specific idea of responsible global citizenship (aka slavery). They guide our leaders to foster interdepartmentalized privacy and property invasions. They advise our elected officials which people should be allowed to live, and ominously predict which people need to die for the "good of the community."

"Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). " (Betsy McCaughey, founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor writing in "Deadly Doctors" about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's health policy advisor and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel)

An ever changing target is difficult to identify or to launch an counter-attack against. That's why adept communitarians continuously shift their focus and hide their true ideology behind whatever ideology upsets you the most. When the American "right" accuses Obama of being a socialist or a communist, they play directly into the "capitalist-libertarian versus socialist" debate. The final outcome of the debate is not allowed into the debate itself. The left owns an ample arsenal of dis missives (red-baiting, McCarthyist, etc.) that keeps the controlled "right" exactly where the communitarians need them — stuck in the outdated (and over) capitalist v communist divide. For example, Sarah Palin's right wing introduction of leftist communitarian policing to her hometown of Wassilla was never an issue in the last presidential campaign. Palin's recent facebook attack on Emanuel may be designed to take the focus OFF communitarianism (http://neveryetmelted.com/2009/08/16/dowd-palin-strafing-ezekiel-emanuel/ ). Here's a place where the 103 comments show where the attention's been diverted to: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/dr-death-panel-ezekial-emanuel-lashes.html .

The true nature of the current debate cannot be exposed to the average American, as it appears close to 91% will be most likely to object to eliminating the US Constitution in favor of Communitarian Values (see ACL homepage poll: http://nord.twu.net/acl ).

As for Obama's new advisor on health care,

"His views aren’t limited to this one [the Lancet ] article. In 1996, he wrote a short article for the Hastings Center, in which he expounded upon the role that communitarianism might play in healthcare. Dr Emanuel’s bio-ethical views are heavily fueled by adherence to this philosophy of communitarianism. Briefly put, communitarianism is a fairly new political philosophy that emphasizes the role of the community in defining and shaping individuals. Communitarianism focuses on the need to balance individual rights and interests with that of the community as a whole, and that individual people (or citizens) are shaped by the cultures and values of their communities." http://www.politicalevidence.com/2009/08/obamas-ration-man-ezekiel-emanuel.html

What happens when Americans are actually introduced to the term communitarianism, and why is is always placed inside special quotes?

"Finally (really), because this is a blog about discrimination, I need to relate Dr.Emanuel’s health care “communitarianism,” i.e., his subordination of individual rights to the needs of the community, to the “communitarianism” that is at the root of much racial preference theory. Mickey Kaus noted, in the first of his posts linked above, that civic republican communitarianism is a version of modern liberalism popularized (to a degree) by the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. As some of you with long memories may recall, we have encountered Sandel and his theory here a couple of times, way back in 2003, in discussing how preferentialists have abandoned individual rights in favor of group rights (discriminating against individual whites and Asians isn’t discrimination because whites and Asians as a group suffer no undue hardship)" http://www.aarp.org/community/groups/displayTopic.bt?pageNum=1&groupId=1162&topicId=3474092

There's no doubt what-so-ever that Obama's (and Hillary's) National Health Care program is based entirely in communitarian principles. Nobody's ever explained it better than the writers for the natural health site Mercola.com did almost five years ago:

"A communitarian ethic increasingly governs health care in the U.S. It places a greater value on the health of the community, on society as a whole, than on the health of particular individuals. Public health officials have put together a vaccination schedule designed to eliminate infectious diseases to which the population is prey.

"Officials recognize that these vaccines will harm a small percentage of (genetically susceptible) individuals, but it is for the common good. The communitarian code posits that it is morally acceptable, if necessary, to sacrifice a few for the good of the many. Or as one observer more bluntly puts it, "Individual sheep can be sheared and slaughtered if it is for the welfare of their flock." This information is provided by Mercola.com, the world's most visited and trusted natural health website.

Communitarianism, by Obama's mentor's definition, is supposed to be the final synthesis of all conflicting political, racial, and religious ideologies. It's based entirely on Georg Hegel's interpretation of "God's Idea." Hegel said men will only be free when they make themselves total slaves to the state. He also said only a very enlightened few can comprehend how this works out for mankind. Hegelians helped force the world into social evolution by promoting violent conflicts between opposites. Now they brilliantly offer us their preplanned and more "moral" solutions to their own staged conflicts. The real conflict, the one between us and them, has barely surfaced as a possibly yet. That's the one they know they'd lose.

The only thing the communitarians have not been prepared to debate is an anticommunitarian argument. Since they claim their final synthesis is so perfect it gives rise to no antithesis, they can never acknowledge the existence of any credible counter-theory, no matter how well presented it is or how well backed up it is with published documents. All American colleges teach communitarian programs and policy, but most are savy enough to disguise it with vague terms like sustainable community development and rebuilding faith-based communities. On the rare occassion that our anti thesis is introduced to a class as an assignment or under "further reading," the result is always the same — dead silence.

When a communitarian uses the word "community" in a public program, they're quietly imposing Community Rights on unsuspecting people holding legal claim to the protection of their natural born Individual Rights. The term "community" can be used to define anything from the global merchant community to the local community's Neighborhood Watch program. The emerging global communitarian system is a data driven experiment in micro-managing all aspects of human life. It's no accident that the US Census expanded into the invasive American Community Survey, just as it's not an accident that rural college programs like the Natural Resources and Community Development Program offered by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks primarily teaches "Workshops using GPS for navigation and mapping." How can they make us all "participate" if they don't know who we are, where we live and how many guns we own?

Communitarianism is the global change ideology of the 21st century. It's the foundation for global COPS, US-UK peacekeeping invasions and UN-NATO wars of liberation. It's the purpose for intrusive international efforts to achieve sustainable community development. It's the foundation for the European Union (and CAFTA/NAU/SPP/Wildlife & Trade Corridors, et.al.) and the primary reason for the failure of the Lisbon Treaty. Considering the recent anticommunitarian developments in Germany, Ireland, Portugul and the Czech Republic, now might be a very good time for Americans to get up to speed on Obama's real agenda and join their allies in what's left of the free thinking world.

"In essence, the court has ruled that by passing the so-called "accompanying law" to the Lisbon Treaty, which determines the rights of the German parliament to participate in European legislation, Germany had relinquished significant monitoring rights to the "Brussels EU". According to the judges, this unconstitutionally subjects the German people to the whims of a bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy." (www.eu-facts.org )

The EU constitution and the Lisbon Treaty are being soundly rejected by the voters and judges (?!?!?) in several European countries. Nothing bothers the communitarian promoters of global peace and democracy more than people's insistance on peaceful, fully informed democratic voting. The Responsive Communitarians feel they have zero obligation to respond to legitimate questions and requests for their insider planning documents. If the communitarians have their way, Americans in the US will never get the chance to vote on communitarian integration. Obama and the fully committed communitarian US Congress will just slip it down our throats like we're all special guests at Jim Jones' cocktail party.

Their superior community morality knows no limits and has no organized opposition in the USA. The communitarians don't even worry about public scrutiny… the left v right divide works wonders at keeping people confused and way off target. How did the American press miss the fact that Obama appointed a communitarian to the US Supreme Court (Sonia Sotomayor)?

"Anyone who, without preconception, examines the life of Norman Thomas emerges with the sense of a deeply moral and morally subtle man who called himself a Socialist – even while he was repudiated by myriad Socialists – because he believed that a communitarian philosophy is truer to democracy than the everyone-for-himself libertarianism that represents the opposite pole in American politics." ("So, Who the Hell is Norman Thomas?")

Today I think anyone who still calls communitarianism a conspiracy theory or too difficult to pronounce or understand is purposefully diverting your attention from the only thing you may need to know about Obama. If you understand communitarianism, you understand it all. If you know just a piece of it, like the communist piece or the socialist agenda, you may not be able to see how capitalism and libertarianism play a role to further the overall communitarian agenda. Each "side" had a role in the final solution, so yes, they must all be studied and understood. But why stop midway in the dialectical drama? We're already into the final act where everything balances into one perfect theory of achieving world peace and harmony.

Etzioni assumed that once Obama won the presidency, all Americans would learn the actual terms for the new American system of injustice. Apparently Americans still need be kept in the dark regarding the purpose and objectives of the Obama administration. References to communitarianism continue to be short and appear benignly insignificant. It's so not. As Marc Ambender at the Atlantic assures us,

"Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich aren't debating the moral philosophy of John Rawls, whose formulations Emanuel borrows." (Zeke Emanuel, The Death Panels, And Illogic In Politics)

There's a very short window of opportunity being presented on the global stage.. who will speak for the Americans before the final curtain falls? The Irish? One can only hope.

Stop Communitarian Laws. The country you save may be your own.

Further reading:

Volume 10, Number 4, December 2000
E-ISSN: 1086-3249 Print ISSN: 1054-6863
DOI: 10.1353/ken.2000.0025
Gauthier, Candace Cummins.
Moral Responsibility and Respect for Autonomy: Meeting the Communitarian Challenge
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal – Volume 10, Number 4, December 2000, pp. 337-352
The Johns Hopkins University Press

"The principle of respect for autonomy has come under increasing attack both within health care ethics, specifically, and as part of the more general communitarian challenge to predominantly liberal values. This paper will demonstrate the importance of respect for autonomy for the social practice of assigning moral responsibility and for the development of moral responsibility as a virtue. Guided by this virtue, the responsible exercise of autonomy may provide a much-needed connection between the individual and the community."

About — Niki Raapana is the co-founder of the Anti Communitarian League, http://nord.twu.net/acl, a tiny, unfunded private research tentsitute that studies communitarianism from a commoner's perspective. Her blog is Living Outside the Dialectic, and with her email box so spammed by right and left wing propagandists lately, she now prefers all online comments about her articles be presented there. Niki is also the author of "2020: Our Common Destiny" (an introduction to communitarian law and the corresponding global political system) and co-author of "The Anti Communitarian Manifesto," presented in 2 parts, "Part One: What is the Hegelian Dialectic?" and "Part Two: The Historical Evolution of Communitarian Thinking."
SOURCE: http://nikiraapana.blogspot.com/

As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.

In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.

The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.

He complained that the owners of the city – the Arab Palestinians – have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.

This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.

Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.

I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.

My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats.  His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway – to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.

Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.

This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.

Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.

Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.

The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.

I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 – 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.

This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.

For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.

The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgotten to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.

Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!

Visit Palestinian Mothers to see some films of the scenes this article talks about.

Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.

Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.

Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a  military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.

Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+missions/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem.jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!

On 25 June, the Portland Indymedia website published an article entitled 'Rose City Antifa: Statement on Anti-Semites and their Collaborators' [1]. Rose City Antifa is part of the Anti-Racist Action Network.

Since its creation in 1999 during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Indymedia has been an essential source for community organizing. However, this 'Statement on Anti-Semites', and the list of irresponsible comments attached to it, is an example of enabling unscrupulous individuals to divide and weaken the community Indymedia was founded to serve.

The statement refers to a talk by Valdas Anelauskas, a Lithuanian immigrant who describes himself as a 'radical conservative'. The talk was a critique of the 'Frankfurt School', a Marxist theory of psychology. The anti-war activists who invited him to speak in Portland have a long record of inviting liberal speakers – this is the first conservative they have hosted. They organized a protest against a recent American Israel Public Affairs conference, which took place during the Gaza massacre. This is when the allegations of antisemitism began.

Following Anelauskas's presentation, those who organized the meeting were denounced as 'fascist collaborators', One of the ringleaders was tried in his absence by anonymous contributors to Indymedia. The organizations he has been involved in for decades were 'called on' to 'call him out'. The co-op where he works was told to fire him or face a boycott campaign, though it is illegal to dismiss employees for their opinions. The statement ended:

       'This statement is a beginning; other fascist collaborators should not consider themselves to have been let off the hook in any way. No compromise and no half-measures!'

Strong stuff. As if someone was signaling to German bombers above Portland.

The statement makes no distinction between words and violent acts, implying that Anelauskas's ideas are so dangerous, those who invited him should be ostracized for life. Anelauskas is a rarity, an extreme right-wing intellectual. He does not advocate violence. He does not deny the Holocaust. Unlike the Zionists who started the campaign to shut him up, he opposes the Iraq war. He presents us with a clear choice: are the feelings of American Jews more important than the lives of Arab children? Portland anti-fascists have answered loud and clear, staking their place in the modern American left.

Rebuttals of the Antifascist statement have not been given equal prominence on Indymedia, and some have been disappeared. It's straight out of the Moscow Trials: respected activists are publicly denounced on the basis of hearsay, and people accept it. Just as in Stalin's Russia, apologies and confessions don't help, they just encourage the persecutors. Here is a statement by one of the Portland accused – "I don't deny the horrors of WWII including the Holocaust and the many forgotten details of that time", and here is the antifascist response: 'This itself is a classic Holocaust-denial strategy'. That's right, affirming that the Holocaust happened is Holocaust denial.

The only people who identified themselves a members of minorities in the Indymedia comments disagreed with the antifascist statement. One African-American said he is opposed to campaigns against thought crimes, and that arguments, even ethnically-based ones, don't hurt him. In reply, the antifascists treated him differently from white people arguing the same thing: they were condescending rather than abusive.

Recently, The Israel Project, a Washington DC think-tank, issued a report on the right language to use to manipulate the public. Its chapters include "Gaza: Israel’s right to self-defense" and "Talking to the American Left"; killing babies and political correctness. It recommends using leftist phrases, such as 'call out antisemitism' and 'oppression'. This is what the anti-racists do. This does not imply a conspiracy, nor they have been infiltrated by Zionists: they help them without doing so consciously.  Here is a good example from the Indymedia comments on the antifascist witch-hunt:

       'As a former Portland resident who is tired of leftists who have come to accept antisemitism, I want to thank you for your actions'.

Notice the lack of specific examples, and the use of personal feelings as a weapon of argument. 'Antisemitism' could mean any criticism of Israel. When the Republicans at the Oregon Commentator website reproduced the Indymedia statement approvingly, the antifascists were nonplussed, not understanding that it is quite logical for right-wing Zionists to welcome the aid of left-wing antifascists. As a conservative diplomat wrote:

       "The tactics of [X] plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, an utter disregard for the truth, and the substitution of political correctness for analysis".

Can you guess what 'X' stands for? Anti-Racist Action? No, the Israel Lobby.

Anti-Racist Action's latest antics include postering a Portland neighborhood with the photo and address of an anti-immigration guy they disagree with, then trying to provoke a fight when he appears in public [2]. Their tactic is obvious – start with unpopular right-wingers, then move on to their more liberal opponents: first the 'Nazis', then the 'Nazi-enablers'. Pick us off one by one. Sound familiar? ARA is more of a danger to the progressive community than the insignificant or imaginary 'fascists' they 'confront' and 'call out'. Their messianic certainty recalls the worst excesses of the seventies left. ARA has nothing to do with combating genuine threats, and everything to do with increasing its own power. If they asked us to agree with them, the antifascists would be implying that we are able to judge which ideas are dangerous, and avoid them, but are unable to listen to them safely.. If you can judge which arguments are wrong in advance, then you
 are also capable of listening to them without the danger of being misled by them. It is illogical to say 'I am smart enough to work out which ideas I am not smart enough to be exposed to'. So the  antifascists cannot ask; they must demand: 'defy us, or capitulate'.

Those who realize the need to stand up against intimidation are forced into a corner. We are now obliged to defend Valdas Anelauskas and the decision to invite him. The danger of doing this is overwhelmed by the danger of not doing it, and handing a victory to the self-appointed thought police. The ironies are almost funny – we have antifascists who use totalitarian tactics, anti-sexist men brimming over with macho aggression, and anarchists who want to be cops. Anti-Racist Action opposes the 'capitalist court system': it's too fair. It doesn't accept hearsay, for one thing.

What can you do to counter this threat to community and freedom? Listen to individuals further to the right than you have up until now; they don't bite. I enjoy listening to Valdas Anelauskas: he is so right-wing, he makes Michael Savage sound like Karl Marx. When you hear that someone is a 'Holocaust denier', don't believe it – find out for yourself. Hold meetings in your community to discuss Israel, race, and other issues, and state in advance that any allegations of antisemitism will be ignored. Invite controversial speakers from left and right. Never apologize. Say no to intimidation and censorship.

1. 'Statement on Anti-Semites', http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/06/392268.shtml?discuss
2. 'Rogue of the Week', Willamette Week, http://wweek.com/columns/rogue/#35..36

He truly loved the world and the simple gifts it gave
It gave him music and his family
More than enough

Never a moment without music, not if he could help it
Often wondered what a thought in his head sounded like

It’s been six years since his music left us
Stopped so abruptly
The sound of the interruption still burns in my ears

Mohammad Khatib, along with over twenty other Palestinians from Bil’in, has been arbitrarily arrested during a recent night-time raid carried out by the Israeli army. The agricultural village of Bil’in has gained international attention for its weekly protests against the Israeli apartheid wall. Bil’in has become a symbol for the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel’s ongoing military occupation.

Mohammad Khatib has now joined an estimated 8,000 Palestinian prisoners currently being detained by Israeli authorities. According to a recent report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners “face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities.” The Palestinian prisoner population includes over 400 children and over 100 women detainees.

Today, increasing numbers of Palestinian children, including youth from Bil’in village, are being arrested and detained by Israeli forces. According to the Palestinian section of Defense for Children International, “each year, hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested, interrogated, abused and imprisoned by the Israeli military authorities. In some cases, the abuse amounts to torture.”

Israel is targeting Palestinian community activists from Bil’in in an attempt to silence a popular resistance movement that is gaining international attention and inspiring other Palestinian communities in the West Bank to take-up similar popular protest strategies. Throughout the past year, several other Palestinian villages have also initiated weekly protests against Israel’s apartheid wall.

In June 2009, Mohammed Khatib traveled to Canada for the preliminary hearings of a historic lawsuit launched by Bil’in village against two Quebec-based companies, Green Park International and Green Mount International. Both companies are building illegal Israeli-only settlements on Bil’in’s lands.

At present, Mohammed Khatib, a father to two sons and two daughters, remains in Israeli custody despite the fact that no charges have been brought against Khatib.

Monday’s night-time raid is just one in a series of many carried out by Israeli forces in Bil’in since June 2009. These military raids coincided with the commencement of legal proceedings against Green Park International and Green Mount International in Canada.

We calling on Montrealers to participate in a demonstration this Friday to express solidarity with Mohammad Khatib, Bil’in village and the Palestinian movement against Israeli apartheid and occupation.

for more information visit:
www.bilin-village.org

FRIDAY AUGUST 14th 12h00
Indigo Bookstore
corner of St. Catherine & McGill college
(metro McGill)
Montreal, Canada
Source: http://www.tadamon.ca/post/4391