Settler Violence Report, May/June 2009

Settler Violence Report, May/June 2009

By Ahmad Jaradat and Virginia F.

Settlers in Hebron. July 16, 2009 Hebron and Southern West Bank On the evening of 1 May, approximately 20 settlers from the Bat Ayin settlement north of Hebron opened fire on homes in the Palestinian village of Safa. The settlers burned a field which was planted with wheat and belongs to farmer Mohammed Husain Musleh Adi. Villagers from Safa and other nearby villages gathered after mosque loud-speakers issued notification of the violence. Residents threw stones at the settlers to protect themselves and their homes. After arriving on the scene, the Israeli military announced that the village is a closed military zone. Israeli soldiers then sat at checkpoints on the roads that lead to the village and did nothing to stop the settlers' actions. Two weeks ago settlers from Bat Ayin also uprooted tens of olive trees on land located close to the settlement. Also on 1 May, Israeli bulldozers under the protection of the military leveled around ten dunums of land near the Ale’azer settlement located to the south of the Palestinian village of al-Khader. The site is called Abu Bakeer and is lies in the Bethlehem District. The affected land belongs to the Salah family and was planted with grapes. Ramzi Salah, mayor of al-Khader, said the aim of the destruction is to expand the neighboring settlement. On 7 May, armed settlers from Bat Ayin settlement prevented farmers from Bait Omar to reach their land and work. Settlers fired into the air when farmers attempted to reach land located in the site of 'Ain al-Baida. The farmers fled after the settlers fired. On 12 May, settlers from Giv’at Harsina and Kiryat Arba attacked a group of Palestinians and internationals who had gathered in Buwaira, located to the east of Hebron. The demonstrators had gathered to protest land confiscation in the area. Hashem al-Azza, a 45-year-old activist, sustained head injuries after settlers arrived and began throwing stones at the group. The army also reportedly assisted the settlers in attacking the demonstrators. On 17 May, dozens of settlers in cooperation with extreme Knesset Members from the Israeli National Party convened in the streets of the Old City of Hebron. The gathering took place under the direction of a Knesset member Yakov Katz, of the Ichud Leumi Party. Defense Minister Ehud Barak granted the group permission to visit and tour the city. News sources described the visit as designed to encourage settlement in the Old City and to enhance the existing outpost there. Starting from the morning, the Israeli army closed shops and all streets in the affected area and increased checkpoint activity. In some areas of the city, local Palestinian organizations, internationals, and Arab Knesset members gathered to protest the visit. On 19 June, army officers from the Israeli Civil Administration issued home demolition orders to five Hebron families. The homes are located in Hejra, situated to the south of the city and two kilometers to the west of the Bait Hagai settlement. The homes are close to Road Number 60, which serves the settlements. Land Defense Committee sources said that these orders were issued to Palestinians who cannot build or expand their own homes because they reside in Area C, for which construction permits are almost impossible to obtain. Meanwhile, settlement and settlement road-building in this area continues. The Committee's Abed al-Hadi Hantash said that since the beginning of this year, around 90 home demolition orders have been given to Palestinians, particularly in the southern hills area where the settlement projects are active. On 19 May, a female settler from Kiryat Arba ran over a 3-year-old child with her car. The incident occurred on the main road in the al-Ra area, to the west of the settlement. The woman tried to escape but people gathered and prevented her from leaving. The army ultimately came and let her go. The child, Jalela Mus’ab al-Ja’bari, was taken to a Hebron hospital for treatment. Her case was described as medium. On 24 May, four farmers from Om El-Muqfera and Om Toba villages, to the southeast of Yatta, were injured when approximately 20 settlers attacked them using stones and stakes. The farmers had been shepherding their goats in the land to the west of the settlement. The injured are Ismael Abu Qubaita, Issa Jebreel Makhamreh, Ibraheem ali El-Zain and Ali Mohammed Makhamreh. The men were taken to local medical centers in Yatta for treatment. On 30 May, settlers from Bat Ayin settlement attacked farmers who came to work the land to the south of the settlement. Jamla Mohammed Husain Adi, 45, and her child Mai Ibraheem Thaljee, 3, were injured when the settlers pushed them to the ground and then tried to force them to leave the land. Internationals were injured in the same event when the settlers threw stones at them. Mohammed Ayyad Awad, an activist in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM?), said that the attacks happened while the army was present and did nothing to stop the settlers. Futhermore, the army declared the area a military zone and forced the farmers and internationals, who came to pick crops alongside the farmers, to leave. The army detained several farmers and Israeli activists for hours. On 8 June, army bulldozers damaged and leveled 40 dunums of land in the Baq’a area, northeast of Hebron, and damaged seven agricultural pools. The land was being used for grape cultivation and belongs to Yahya Saeed Jaber, Mohammed Nader Jaber, Azmi Abed El-Azeez Jaber, Abedel Wahhab Jaber, Jawad Abed El-Jawwad Rajabi, and Ziyad Hammouda Jaber. The 40 dunums will be confiscated for use by the Kiryat Arba and Giv’at Harsina settlements. On 13 June, settlers from Kiryat Arba and other settlement outposts renewed their attacks against the residents of Wadi Husain, which lies to the west of the settlement. According to Wadi Husain resident Fahd Ja’bari, the settlers antagonize village residents by throwing stones at their houses and running after children in the main street. On 17 June, a new wave of settler attacks began in Om al-Khair village in the southern hills. Settlers came from the nearby Karmiel settlement and threw stones at shepherds to force them to leave the land near the settlement. Tareq Salem Hadaleen, 16, was struct by a stone in his head. Israeli soldiers arrived and announced the area a closed military zone and sided with the settlers in keeping the farmers out of the area. In a statement to the AIC, Yasser Hadaleen said that these attacks are aimed at forcing residents to leave their land, especially land located to the east of the Karmeal settlement, to make it easier to confiscate. But in spite of these attacks carried out in cooperation with the army, Hadaleen said that village residents do not plan to leave. He also said that instead of stopping the settlers' attacks, the army arrives and says they don't want problems – and then simply declares the area a closed military zone. On the afternoon of 19 June, a group of settlers from Beit 'Ain settlement burned a wooded area belonging to families from the villages of Bait Omar and Soreef. Around 120 trees were destroyed in the fire. Mohammed Ayyad Awad, a solidarity movement activist, said that each day his movement is informed of similar aggressions and that tree burning in this area is an ongoing occurrence. On 20 June, several internationals and residents of Beit Omar were inured when settlers, in cooperation with the army, attacked dozens of farmers and members of solidarity groups who came to help farmers work their land adjacent to Bait Omar. The settlers arrived from the nearby Beit 'Ain settlement and threw stones. For months, settlers from this settlement have been attacking the farmers; the Land Defense Committee has recorded 11 attacks since April, including tree-burning and physical assaults on farmers. On 21 June, three residents from the Palestinian village of Sosya, southeast of Yatta, were injured when settlers from the nearby Susiya settlement set fire to their tent in the early morning hours while they were asleep. Abed El-Rahman Mohammed Jawaj’a, 22, Yahya Khaled Nawaj’a, 21, and Ibrahim Mohammed Khaleel Nawaj’a, 22, were injured in the attack. In a similar incident two months ago, settlers from the same settlement tried to burn another tent, but a gathering crowd prevented them from doing so. Last December the settlers set fire to two tents belonging to Sara Salamah Nawaj’a and Mohammed Jaber Nawaj’a. On 22 June, settlers from Bait 'Ain carried out new attacks against the land that lies south of the settlement. This time the settlers cut 200 grape and olive trees belonging to Hammad Jaber Sulaibi and Fahd Jaber Slaibi. In the same attacks, the settlers also burned around ten dunums of land. On 22 June, in cooperation with the army, settlers from the Bethlehem-area settlements of Juv’ot [Gva'ot?], Navi Danial [Neve Daniel?]and Bettar [Beitar Illit?] leveled around 40 dunums of planted land to the south of the town of Nahhalen. The land belongs to the Fannon, Shakarneh and Al-Shaikh families. The aim of the settler's destruction of the land is to build electricity and water grids that will serve the settlements in the area. Local Council Chairman Mohammed Ghayada reported that this project of building infrastructure for the settlement will lead to the confiscation or isolation of another 3300 dunums of village land. He added that since 1967, his town has lost 15,000 dunums of land to the settlement projects. Most of their land has been confiscated, he said. The village is already surrounded on all sides by settlements, which lie very close to the village's buildings and adversely affect its development. Nablus and Northern West Bank On 1 May, settlers from the settlement outpost Gi’ad, east of Qalqilya, attacked 20-year-old farmer Mohammed Ahmed Abu Baker of the village of Jet. The young farmer was working on his land near the outpost when five settlers arrived, beat him, and sprayed material on his face that inflicted burns. He sustained head and back injuries when the soldiers forced him on the ground and beat him using stones. The settlers also damaged his tractor. Mohammed was taken to Darweesh Nazzal Hospital in Nablus. On 13 May in the district of Jenin, approximately 40 settlers arrived and erected tents on the ruins of the Homish settlement that was dismantled in 2005. The settlers periodically organize protests against the dismantling of the settlement and sometimes engage in attacks against residents of the Selet al-Daher village. On this occasion the settlers threw stones at Palestinian cars on the main road of the village. The army closed the area by checkpoints. On 21 May, dozens of settlers from Itsehar settlement south of Nablus destroyed ten dunums of land that were slated for wheat cultivation. The land is located in Khallet as-Sewar and is owned by a farmer named Mohammed Reda. Palestinian sources in Nablus say that this is not the first time that this area has been targeted by Itsehar settlers. On 22 May, the Israeli Authority issued confiscation notices for 300 dunams in El-Qatayen in the Jenin District. The 300 dunums belong to families from the villages of Ya’bad and Tora El-Gharbiyya. The orders instructed the farmers to take what they need from the land within 45 days. Mohammed Qabaha, a farmer who owns 60 dunums in the affected area, told the AIC that "officers from Civil Administration came to the site and brought the confiscations orders and maps that showed the borders of the land." The land is cultivated with trees and is owned by Mohammed Eid Qabaha, Anees Hasan Qabaha, Mohammed Shareef Zaid, Adnan Ismael Zaid, Husni Zaid, Mohammed Othman Abbadi, Saleh Azeez Zaid, Mohammed Ismael Qabaha, and Awwad Rafeeq Deeb. Qabaha added that each farmer has documents attesting to their ownership of the land. This confiscation will cause around 13 families to lose their main source of income. The Palestinians suspect that the goal behind this confiscation is to build a new settlement on the site. On 22 May, settlers from Itsehar settlement burned a field of wheat owned by a family from the village of Boreen in the southern part of the district. Landowner Mohammed Raja said that the settlers burned 20 dunums of land planted with wheat. The land is located on the site of Khallet Iswar. Fire-Brigades came from nearby towns and stopped the fire while Israeli officers from the DCO arrived and documented the aggression. On the same day, another group of settlers from settlements in the southern Nablus area attacked farmers from Oreef village while they were harvesting their wheat. Physical altercations took place between settlers and farmers when the army came to try to curtail the incident. On 25 May, 21-year-old Al-Quds University student Hiba Abed El-Haq was waiting at Za'tra checkpoint north of Nablus when settlers threw stones at her, injuring her in the back and face. The settlers descended on the checkpoint in three cars and threw stones at the waiting cars and passengers. The soldiers present at the scene reportedly waited more than thirty minutes before they intervened and stopped the settlers. On 7 June, dozens of local organizations and farmers met in the town hall of 'Aneen, west of Jenin, to discuss settlers' daily attacks against their land. 'Aneen Mayor Rabah Yaseen said that 11,500 dunums of land, most of it planted, now lies on the other side of the Separation Wall and is therefore difficult for farmers to reach. For several months settlers have been damaging this land and allowing their own goats to feed on the trees. The issue has been brought to the attention of Israeli officials, but nothing has been done to prevent the settlers from harming the land that lies outside the Separation Wall. Residents of the area's agricultural settlements and people from inside Israel continue to bring their cows and goats to the land. Meanwhile the farmers are unable to reach the land to cultivate it because permission is usually granted only during harvest times. On 8 June, the settlers from Itamar settlement east of Nablus burned 20 dunums of land planted with olive trees. The land is owned by Amjad Sulaiman Qawareeq of the village of Awarta. According to Ghassan Duglas, a spokesman for settlement activity in the northern West Bank, the attacks by settlers in Nablus District have been heavy in the past two weeks, particularly involving settlers from Itsehar and Itamar settlements. On 26 June, approximately 50 settlers from settlements in the Tulkarem District erected tents on land belonging to Ibrahim Kayed, who is from the village of Kufer Labad, east of Nablus. The settlers also raised the Israeli flag on the land. Kayed said that when he and his sons went to protest, the settlers stoned and beat him and his sons Samer, 30, and Jamal, 20. Both were taken to a local clinic because of injuries to their heads and hands. Sources in Nablus say that it seems the settlers want to build a new outpost on the site, especially given that this is not the first time the settlers have staged a sit-in on this land.

Ahrar center: Israel escalated its medical neglect policy against prisoners

Ahrar center: Israel escalated its medical neglect policy against prisoners

Palestinian Information Center

July 16, 2009 OCCUPIED PALESTINE, (PIC)-- Al-Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies and human rights said Thursday that Israel escalated the policy of medical neglect pursued against Palestinian prisoners in its jails with the aim of destroying them psychologically. The center affirmed that the Israeli behavior against Palestinian prisoners became worse than ever after the capture of soldier Gilad Shalit, adding that Israel escalated its restrictions and punitive measures against them. Fouad Al-Khafash, the center director, said that the prisoners in Ramle prison are living in a big stable not suitable for human use. Khafash also said that 30 prisoners in Ramale are dying, while many others live on medical equipments or suffer from paralysis or chronic diseases, noting that there are thousands of prisoners in other jails who are living in the same misery. He added that the Ramle prison administration provides prisoners with tons of different painkillers which palliate the pain and not eliminate it, which made the prisoners’ bodies lose their reaction to these medicines and suffer from stomach disorders and other internal diseases. In another context, the IOF troops stormed and ransacked the house of prisoner Anas Abdelrahim in Deir Al-Ghusun town in Tulkarem and confiscated the hard disk of his personal computer. The prisoner has been questioned by Israeli interrogators since two months. In a press release, the ministry of prisoners stated that prisoner Mohamed Hamdeo from Gaza, who was kidnapped in 1989 and is serving a life sentence, has joined the list of prisoners who served 20 years or more, thus raising the number of prisoners’ deans to 106 detainees.

Comrade Mallouh calls for full and independent investigation into the death of Arafat

Comrade Mallouh calls for full and independent investigation into the death of Arafat
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -PFLP



July 16, 2009

Comrade Abdel-Rahim Mallouh, Deputy General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for a full and independent investigation into the death of former President Yasser Arafat in order to fully determine who is responsible for his death.

Comrade Mallouh called for this commission of inquiry on July 15, 2009 when asked about recent allegations and documents raised by Farouk al-Qaddumi, Fateh general secretary, accusing Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan of conspiring with Israel to eliminate Arafat and other key Palestinian political leaders. He noted that the PFLP has always called for such an investigation and that it is very much needed.

He stated further that no statement had been issued by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as the committee has not met for over 2 weeks, dismissing recent statements attributed to the Executive Committee denouncing Qaddumi. Comrade Mallouh called for an end to the misuse of the name of the Executive Committee of the PLO in making such statements.

For reference purposes, and because it has not been widely distributed in English, we present the alleged transcript released by Qaddumi below. This is alleged by Qaddumi to be a transcript of a meeting between former Israeli prime minister and war criminal Ariel Sharon, Mahmoud Abbas, Muhammad Dahlan, and a U.S. delegation, that took place in 2003 before the Aqaba summit. Discussion of these allegations is the excuse that was provided in order to shut down Al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank by the PA in Ramallah under Salam Fayyad. In the interests of presenting information to the people, the document is below:


Meeting Transcript


Sharon: I insisted on this meeting before the summit so we can finalize all security matters and put these final touches so as not to encounter any confusion or discrepancies in the future.

Dahlan: If you didn’t ask for this meeting, I would have.

Sharon: To begin with, work must begin on eliminating all the military and political leaders of Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades and the Popular Front so as to create a state of chaos in their ranks that will allow you to pounce on them easily.

Abu Mazen: In this way, we will inevitably fail. We won’t be able to get rid of them or confront them.

Sharon: So then what’s your plan?

Dahlan: We told you our plan and informed you of it. And to the Americans, in writing. We need first to have a period of quiet so we can wrest control over all of the security services and all of the institutions.

Sharon: As long as Arafat is planted in al-Muqata'a watching you in Ramallah, you will certainly fail. This fox will surprise you as he did in the past. Because he knows what you intend to do. And he will work towards your failure and delay you. He’ll proclaim, as the street does, that you are being used for the "dirty era."

Dahlan: We’ll see who uses the other.

Sharon: The first step needs to be to kill Arafat through poisoning. I do not want him exiled, except if there are guarantees from the involved states that he will be under house arrest, otherwise Arafat will return to living on a plane.

Abu Mazen: If Arafat dies before we are able to have control on the ground and all the institutions, and over Fateh, and the Al Aqsa Brigades, then we will face great complications.

Sharon: To the contrary you will not control anything as long as Arafat is alive.

Abu Mazen: The plan needs to be where we pass everything through Arafat. This will be more successful for us and for you. During the period of clashing with Palestinian organizations and the assassination of its leadership and its membership - these matters will bring with them consequences for Arafat himself. And he can’t say to the people that this is the work of Abu Mazen. But it is the work of the head of the PA. I know Arafat well. He will not accept to be on the margins. He wants to be the leader even if he has lost all options, and when he has no option in front of him but civil war. Even then he prefers to be the leader.

Sharon: You used to say before Camp David that Arafat is the last to know and Barak, Clinton and Tenet were surprised that he is free in deciding who surrounds him. Perhaps you do not learn from the past.

Dahlan: We have now gone about creating an apparatus composed of the police and the Preventative Security, numbering over 1800. This combination is so that we are able to integrate those you nominated on the basis that each of the police and the PS, will believe that the members are from the other apparatus. We can increase where we want. We are now putting all the officers from all the agencies before difficult choices. We’ll squeeze them by all means so they follow us. And we will work to isolate all the officers who will be an obstacle for us. And we will not wait. We have started to work intensely. And we put the most dangerous figures from Hamas and Jihad and Al-Aqsa Brigades under surveillance. So that if you were to now ask me the most dangerous five people, I would be able to tell you their location with precision. This facilitates your quick response for any activity that takes place against you. We are now working on penetrating the Palestinian organizations forcefully, so in the coming period we will be able to dismember and eliminate them.

Sharon: You will find me supportive of you from the skies for the targets that are difficult for you. But I fear that Arafat has penetrated you, and has leaked your plans to Hamas, Jihad and others.

Dahlan: This structure has no relation to Arafat, not from near, nor from far, with the exception that the members of each entity receive their salaries from the Ministry of Finance [in which Salam Fayyad was then minister of finance, under the government of Abu Alaa, Ahmed Qureia]. We were able to deduct for the apparatus a specific budget to be able to cover all the expenses and Arafat is losing control. We will not leave him alone in this stage.

Sharon: We need to make it easier for you to liquidate the leaders of Hamas by way of creating a problem from the outset, so we can kill all the military and political leaders. In doing so we will pave the way for you to take control on the ground.

Abu Mazen: In this way we will fail entirely and we will not be able to accomplish anything from the plan. Rather the situation will explode without control.

The American delegation: We see Dahlan’s plan is good. And we need to give them a period of quiet so as to achieve full control and you need to withdraw for them from some of the areas to allow the Palestinian police to take over security. And if any operation takes place, you return and you reoccupy the area harshly, so the people feel that those fighters are a disaster upon them, and that they are the ones who force the Israeli army to return from the areas from which they has departed.

Sharon: Abu Mazen himself used to advise us that we should not withdraw before liquidating the infrastructure of terror not to reward it.

Abu Mazen: Yes I advised you of that but you did not succeed in that until now. I thought that you would succeed with this more quickly.

Dahlan: The levers of success are in our hands. Arafat has begun to lose control over matters bit by bit and we have begun to take control over institutions more than in the past in addition to the joint security force from the Preventive Security and the police. It is under Col. Hamdi Al-Riffi. You know him well. And we sent you all the documents concerning these matters in detail. What is important here is that this force does not submit to Arafat, and takes no orders from him. We will begin our work in the north of the Gaza strip as a beginning. As for the Al-Aqsa Brigades, soon it will be like an open book before us. We have put in place a plan so that they will have a single leader, and he will liquidate anyone who hinders us.

Sharon: I agree to this plan. And so that it quickly succeeds, and doesn’t take a long time, there is a need to kill all the most important political leaders, besides the military leaders. Like Rantisi [Hamas leader], Abdallah Shami [Islamic Jihad leader], Zahhar [Hamas leader], and Abu Shanab [Hamas leader] and Haniyeh [Hamas leader], Majdalawi [PFLP leader] Mohammed Al Hindi [Islamic Jihad leader], Nafez Azzam [Islamic Jihad leader].

Abu Mazen: This will explode the situation and will make us lose control on all affairs. We need to start to work for a hudna, so we can control the situation on the ground. This will be more successful for you and for us.

Dahlan: Without a doubt, there is need for your support of us in the field. I support the killing of Rantisi and Abdalla Shami because those, if killed, will create confusion and a large vacuum in the ranks of Hamas and Jihad. Because they are the effective leadership.

Sharon: Now you have begun to get it, Dahlan.

Dahlan: But not now. It’s necessary for you to withdraw for us from large parts of Gaza so we can have the stronger argument, before the people. And when Hamas and Islamic Jihad violates the hudna, you can kill them.

Sharon: And if they don’t violate the hudna? Are you going to leave them to organize and prepare operations against us so that we will be surprised that this hudna worked against us?

Dahlan: They will not be patient on the hudna while their organizations are being dismantled. Then they will break the ceasefire. After that will be the chance to go after them. Then it is your grace, Sharon.

The American delegation: This is a reasonable and logical solution.

Sharon: I will not forget when you used to say to the Labor Party and even to us that you have control of everything, and the reality proved the opposite. Allow me to guide the way my own special way.

Abu Mazen: The first condition in the Road Map stipulates that you undertake steps supporting in confronting terror. We see that the best support that you can give us is to give us a part of the Gaza Strip so that we will be able to exercise control over it. We told you that we will not allow any authority other than us to exist on the ground.

Sharon: We told you more than once that supportive steps means that we will support you in fighting terror, i.e. with planes and tanks.

Abu Mazen: This is not support for us.

Jews desecrate Muslim graves in the interests of "tolerance"

Jerusalem / PNN - Violations of the international laws that make Israeli measures to overtake East Jerusalem illegal are on a serious rise.

Neighborhoods like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah are continuing to resist threats of home demolition and land confiscation by hosting Friday prayers today. But stopping the occupying Israeli administration is far off.

This week the Israelis excavated 300 Islamic graves in Ma’man Allah Cemetery. With the help of the “Museum of Tolerance” in Los Angeles, the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality is continuing work to place another “Museum of Tolerance” atop the Muslim cemetery.

When the Israelis took the skeletons from 300 graves this week, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights confirms, they dumped them into one mass grave.

The Ma’man Allah Cemetery near Hebron Gate in Jerusalem began being systematically destroyed for this museum two years ago. A court case slowed it down.

The cemetery is approximately 200 dunams in size and includes graves of Muslim intellectuals and soldiers who fought the Crusaders in the city as part of Salah Addin's army.

Also in the city this week as part of public Israeli efforts intended to establish a Jewish majority in occupied East Jerusalem, they demolished two houses in Beit Hanina and Silwan claiming that they were built without permits.

Notice

Dear friends

I apologize, I shall be away today and tomorow.I hope not to miss Nasrallah speech

Uprooted

No Innocents in Gaza: Israeli Army

Israeli soldiers were told to kill first and worry later whom they killed.

CAIRO — "Kill first and worry later. All Gazans are your enemies. No innocents."

There were some of the directives the Israeli army gave its troops before unleashing its three-week war on the Gaza Strip, an impoverished coastal territory of 1.6 million.

"Better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy," one Israeli soldier who took part in the onslaught said in a testimony published by the Breaking the Silence Israeli activist group on Wednesday, July 15, citing the army’s pre-war briefings instructions.

"If you're not sure, kill," testified another soldier about the same directive.

"In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents."

More than six months later, the Israeli group published a booklet with 54 anonymous testimonies from 30 soldiers who participated in the war Israel unleashed on December 27.

"We Are Creating Bombers": Israelis Shoot Then Ask, Israeli Soldiers Told Palestinian Holocaust Museum

The booklet, the first large collection of Israeli testimonies from the war, describes how soldiers were not given any directives on avoiding civilian casualties.

"The testimonies expose significant gaps between the official stances of the Israeli military and events on the ground," said the group on its website.

The report describes the "systematic demolition" of houses and firing white phosphorous, a controversial weapon that causes chemical burns, in heavily populated areas.

One soldier said that his unit had received an order to "ignite" an area.

"The way to do that was to actually fire phosphorus shells from above," he recalled.

More than 1,400 Gazans, including 437 children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians, were killed and 5,450 wounded in three weeks of air, sea and land attacks.

The onslaught wrecked havoc on the Gaza infrastructure, leaving nearly 20,000 homes and thousands of other buildings damaged.

“Burning Ants”

The testimonies revealed the troubling mentality of Israeli soldiers who had no moral restrictions.

"You feel like an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them," one of the soldiers testified.

"A 20-year-old kid should not have to do these kinds of things to other people."

In another testimony, a soldier described how an Israeli sniper killed a Palestinian man in order to mark a "score" with his gun.

Other soldiers fired at Gazans’ houses and water tanks out of frustration or boredom.

"One guy said he just couldn't finish this operation without killing someone. So he killed someone, apparently some sort of lookout," said one testimony.

"I can definitely say [the victim] was not armed. I can definitely say the soldier regarded this as some children's game and was delighted and laughing after this."

Breaking the Silence, a group founded by former soldiers whose goal is to reveal to Israeli society the army actions, insists the testimonies prove the immoral way the war was conducted was due to the army's systems and not the individual soldier.

"What was proven…is that through the IDF the exception becomes the norm.

"This requires a deep and reflective discussion. This is an urgent call to Israel's society and leadership to take a sober look at the foolishness of our policies."

Caught "steeling" Tony's Picture

Finally he did it.. He CAUGHT ME "STEELING" HIS PICTURE

He came here, while I was reading his debate with anon on the gender of angles, the secular, or islamic state Palestine after Liberation.

When I returned here, it was a big surprise to find his name at the top of the comment section

Tony Sayegh said...

You stole the photo from Palestinian Pundit. Have the courtesy to acknowledge where you got the photo.

If you click on the photo and check properties, you find that it has the title "gang" and that is the title I gave it.

1:25 PM, July 16, 2009

uprooted Palestinian said...

Welcome Tony

Are the one who took that Picture,

Click photo check Properties you find the title I gave it is dahalan-abbas.

2:38 PM, July 16, 2009

uprooted Palestinian said...

BTW, Tony, from time to time I took many, many things from your site, and commnt section and always had the courtesy to acknowledge where I got it.
You are welcome to check and comment. Free speech is Gaurateed here, no banning. Its a promise.
Say hi to the sherf

2:53 PM, July 16, 2009

===========================

Please Tony don't tell the sherf on me

For "your Picture"

I shall return to you this one you took on the same event

BTW, Tony where is Abbas?

And take this as bonus:

YOU MAY STAY TONY, and bash Hamas, Syria Iran as you like, and your contribution shall be moved to the main page.

Gaza and the Language of Power

Link

July 17, 2009

{Gaza/human rights written on a book carried the wrong side up} by Yazeed Alya-al jazeera.net

By Ramzy Baroud, source

Nearly six months have passed since the Israeli army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land that is the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear on the news once in a while, as a recurring subject of human misery.

The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway, and the courageous endeavors of the Free Gaza movement have managed to push Gaza back into the spotlight, even if momentarily and with political context which is lacking at best.

Aside from that, the three-week Israeli onslaught in Gaza, starting December 27 – and the catastrophic conditions endured there – have served the purpose of a footnote in many news reports. The event is generally cited as such: “Israel moved against Hamas in Gaza to quell the firing of militants’ rockets, resulting in the death of such and such number.” Hamas, according to media conventional wisdom, is the “militant group that ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in a bloody coup in mid 2007.”

Sadly, ones worse fears have actualized, where the post-Gaza massacre world and the one which existed prior are exactly the same. Israel is trying to prove that political and military might overpower all human rights reports combined, and that public opinion – which turned against Israel as it wantonly killed and wounded thousands – will eventually turn back in Israel’s favor. One does not need to be an expert in the art of propaganda to predict the public relations model that would allow Israel to deceive millions into believing that the belligerent state is in fact a victim in a sea of hostile Arabs hell-bent on subjugating the Jewish State. Thus it was hardly a deviation from the script when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a most shrewd term to depict his governments’ refusal to respect international law regarding the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, all considered illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention. He said during his recent trip to Germany that the West Bank will never be “Judenrein” a Nazi term meaning “cleansed of Jews”.

And once again, Israel is resorting to its traditional propaganda (such as equating Palestinians with Nazis), drawing on people’s historical sympathies, guilt and ignorance of false analogies.

More, Israel’s National Security Advisor Uzi Arad is in fact reviving the discredited Israeli rhetoric that Israel has no partner in peace, in comments made to Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, July 10. He questioned whether there is in fact a Palestinian leadership that is capable of delivering peace with Israel. If such a Palestinian state would exist, say in 2015 – according to Arad – it would be a “fragile structure. A house of cards.” But he chose to omit that Israel purposely besieged and weakened the democratically elected Palestinian leadership in Gaza, while painstakingly propping and legitimizing Abbas. using with astounding mastery, the carrot and the stick metaphor.

Only Israel can cleverly spawn a dependent, weak leadership, and accuse the Palestinians of not being a worthy peace partner; only Israel can murder thousands of Palestinians and demand security from its very victims; only Israel can caution of a Nazi past, yet cage Palestinians in concentration camps, punish them for recklessly subscribing to the wrong God, or foolishly falling into the wrong race.

It has six months since the unprecedented and savage war against Palestinians in Gaza, and here we are making the same argument, referencing the same deceit and quoting the same outrageous claims. During those same months, unsubstantiated Israeli accounts were countered with carefully composed reports by highly regarded organizations, such as the Red Cross, among others. Bombarded Gaza neighborhoods “look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake,” said a recent Red Cross report, entitled: “Gaza: 1.5 million trapped in despair.”

UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk summed up Israeli behavior in more direct terms, on Thursday, July 9. “There will be no peace between these two peoples, until Israel shows respect for Palestinian rights under international law,” Professor Falk said.

Israeli leaders however pay no heed to international law. In fact there is little evidence that Israel’s history was shaped, in any respect, by international standards, neither those pertaining to war nor peace. Israel only understands the language of politics and power. It is a state that has been constructed, and sustained upon Machiavellian wisdom.

Advisor Arad is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the logic that propels the Israeli state. In his recent interview, he demanded that once a state deal is reached with the Palestinians, Israel should be granted a NATO membership as a “quid pro quo”. To counter nuclear threats by others, he said, Israel must have “tremendously powerful weapons”. Considering that Israel already has nuclear arms, one has to wonder to what other “tremendously powerful weapons” Arad is referring. Arad must’ve been encouraged by US Vice President Joe Biden who said in a recent interview with ABC’s “This Week” that “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursed now (by the US and its allies), that is their sovereign right to do that.”

Once again, it is the brute logic that “might makes right” pursued by those with the bigger guns, that continues to menace the Middle East, with Gaza being the most devastating example.

One must remember that Israel never heeds to statements, and is hardly moved by reports and random condemnations. Only pressure, constant and focused, will grab the attention of Israeli policymakers. Only the language of an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions will translate in Tel Aviv to a legible political language. As for Gaza, civil society must not wait for President Obama or any other to save the slowly starving population, but must take every possible and urgent effort to help an oppressed yet proud community to redeem its basic rights and freedom.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London)

Was Hamas the Work of the Israeli Mossad?

Was Hamas the Work of the Israeli Mossad?
Ramzy Baroud

Sunday, 29 March 2009 14:14

No other place in Palestine was as qualified to spawn a major Islamic movement as was the Gaza Strip.

While various Western governments are struggling to define a possible relationship with the Palestinian movement Hamas, some progressive and leftist circles are also uneasy regarding their own perception of the Islamic movement.

Some have even made the claim that Hamas is, more or less, an Israeli concoction. In fact, the accusation that Hamas was created by Israeli intelligence has become so commonplace that it often requires no serious substantiation. While the claim, as it stands, is erroneous, there is certainly a reason and history behind it. But was Hamas, in fact the work of the Israeli Mossad?

The mere suggestion is consequential, for not only does it discredit one single faction, but implies that Palestinians are deceived into thinking that they actually have some control over their collective destiny. This notion - that Hamas is the brainchild of Israel - is simply incorrect.

It could very well be complicated for one to grasp how such a movement could take a foothold and flourish with such popular support if one has no familiarity with the social, economic and religious history of the Gaza Strip, the birthplace of Hamas.

It is true that for years, Palestinians have suffered poverty, hunger and humiliation under the Israeli occupation. And while the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has played a major role in representing and speaking on behalf of the Palestinian people abroad, its role in the occupied territories has been, at best, lacking.

There are reasons for that, not least because the PLO had its own complex regional and international priorities, and that it lacked the grassroots leverage enjoyed by the Islamic movement. It was only a natural response for the religious institution to fill the gap of an absent government, a role that it took seriously. But let's look a bit more carefully into the evolution and growth of Hamas in Gaza in particular, a presence that was making a strong impact as early as 1967.

In the early years of the occupation, the Islamic movement in Gaza strategized an effort that would require a strong and well-established foundation. Initially, the movement refuted the notion of armed-struggle and was often criticized and ridiculed by secular liberation movements for masking their weak nature as "pacifism".

The truth is, the Islamic movement in Gaza didn't disregard armed struggle in and of itself; it felt that this nation of mostly refugees was in a vulnerable state and would need years of preparation before they could actually become a force to be reckoned with. For this reason, they invested decades to strengthening social bonds in Gazan society, by building mosques, childcare centers, hospitals, schools and so forth.

The years between 1967 to 1975 were designated by the Islamic movement as the phase of "mosque building". The mosque was the central institution that galvanized Islamic societies in Gaza. It was not simply a place of worship but also a hub for education, social and cultural interaction, and later political organization.

In the period between 1967 to 1987, the number of mosques in Gaza tripled, rising from 200 to 600 mosques. The years between 1975 well into the 1980s were dubbed the phase of "social institution building", which included the formation of Islamic clubs, charitable organizations, student societies, etc, which all served as meeting points for Muslim youth.

In 1973, the Islamic Center was established in Gaza, the actual body that served as the heart of all the movement's activities. It was widely understood that the center was an extension of the Egypt-influenced Muslim Brotherhood of the past. Israel purposely did little to halt the establishment of the organization, as it also did little to assist in its growth.

Israel's curious attitude could be explained as part of its policy of reward and punishment. Since the Islamists had - at that particular time - renounced armed struggle, and were providing services, which spared the Israeli budget many millions, there seemed little need to discontinue what at the time may have seemed innocuous activities. But more importantly, Israel was wary of the augmentation of PLO institutions abroad and growing influence on Palestinian societies in the occupied territories.

More, the growing bitterness between other liberation movements in Gaza and the Islamic movement, led by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin gave Israel hope that growing hostilities would result in the pacifying and paralysis of all respective groups, sparing Israel the rigorous task of reining them in. One could argue that any Israeli interference to halt the growth and evolvement of the Islamic movement in Gaza, in that period, would have merely sped up its radicalization, as opposed to annihilating it altogether.

The 1970s and the 1980s were years of growing turmoil for Palestinians with the Camp David Accords, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the many massacres committed by Israel, killings that came to a pinnacle with the 1982 massacres by a Lebanese Forces Christian militia group in Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon.

It was during this time that the Islamic movement in Gaza was undergoing a tremendous metamorphosis. Decades of groundwork would now be put to the test as the movement evolved to embrace armed struggle. It was certainly not an immediate transformation, but in fact had been evolving since as early as 1967.

Whether religious trends are rational in their very narratives or otherwise, the fact was the growth, shifts and evolvement of the Palestinian Islamic movement, in all of its manifestations in the Gaza Strip, followed a rational process that was unique to Gaza and its history.

No other place in Palestine was as qualified to spawn a major Islamic movement as was the Gaza Strip. The Strip was desperately poor, its population mostly composed of refugees and their descendants. Islamist leaders were themselves refugees and were mostly refugee camp dwellers.

So it was that "Hamas" finally made its official appearance in 1987, taking the transformation of the Islamic movement in Gaza one step further, with the birth of the first Palestinian Intifada. Nearly two decades later, Hamas enjoyed a landslide victory in Palestinian elections, another testimony to its phased and calculated growth.

Instead of trying to understand and appreciate the history behind the popular movement, Western countries responded by sanctions, blockades, and a protracted and suffocating siege by Israel that came to a head with the bloodiest massacre of defenseless Palestinian civilians since 1948.

Analysts, politicians, critics and third-parties alike can squabble about the origins and history of this movement that has among many things given a large segment of Palestinian society a sense of self-respect and feeling of leverage with their occupiers; but to advocate that Hamas was cooked up by some Israeli agents hell-bent on the demise of the Palestinians is simply hogwash.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London)

Israelis chained pregnant prisoners to beds

A PALESTINIAN human rights group slammed Israeli treatment of female prisoners in a new UN-sponsored report, saying pregnant women are often shackled on their way to hospitals to give birth.

The women prisoners are held in "Israeli prisons and detention centres which were designed for men and do not respond to female needs", a report by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said.

The report was sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

Pregnant detainees "do not enjoy preferential treatment in terms of diet, living space or transfer to hospitals", it said.

"Pregnant prisoners are also chained to their beds until they enter delivery rooms and shackled once again after giving birth.

"The unbalanced diet, insufficient amounts of protein-rich foods, lack of natural sunlight and movement, poor ventilation and moisture all contribute to the exacerbation and the development of health problems such as skin diseases, anaemia, asthma, prolonged stomach aches, joint and back pains."

In addition, the majority of the prisoners were "subjected to some form of mental pressure and torture through the process of their arrest", including beatings, insults, threats, sexual harassment and humiliation techniques.

The vast majority of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons are young -- some 13 per cent of those arrested in 2007-2008 were under the age of 18 and 56 per cent were between 20 and 30 years of age.

The detainees are often denied means to study, which violates their rights to a higher education and suffer from restrictions on visits.

In September 2008, some 60 per cent had at least one family member who was not allowed to visit them. Open visits were restricted to mothers once their children reached the age of six.

Female prisoners with a husband or other relatives also in jail were "accorded the right to family visits... after months of delays".

In addition, the Israeli prison authorities do not provide gender-sensitive rehabilitation programs, it said.

The report was based on interviews with 125 Palestinian women who were arrested, detained or imprisoned in Israeli jails between November 2007 and November 2008.

Of those, some 65 remain in prison - part of some 9,000 Palestinians currently incarcerated in Israel.

A spokesman for the Israeli prison authorities said he was not aware of the report and could not comment.



Ahrar center: Israel escalated its medical neglect policy against prisoners

[ 16/07/2009 - 01:37 PM ]

OCCUPIED PALESTINE, (PIC)-- Al-Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies and human rights said Thursday that Israel escalated the policy of medical neglect pursued against Palestinian prisoners in its jails with the aim of destroying them psychologically.

The center affirmed that the Israeli behavior against Palestinian prisoners became worse than ever after the capture of soldier Gilad Shalit, adding that Israel escalated its restrictions and punitive measures against them.

Fouad Al-Khafash, the center director, said that the prisoners in Ramle prison are living in a big stable not suitable for human use.

Khafash also said that 30 prisoners in Ramale are dying, while many others live on medical equipments or suffer from paralysis or chronic diseases, noting that there are thousands of prisoners in other jails who are living in the same misery.

He added that the Ramle prison administration provides prisoners with tons of different painkillers which palliate the pain and not eliminate it, which made the prisoners’ bodies lose their reaction to these medicines and suffer from stomach disorders and other internal diseases.

In another context, the IOF troops stormed and ransacked the house of prisoner Anas Abdelrahim in Deir Al-Ghusun town in Tulkarem and confiscated the hard disk of his personal computer. The prisoner has been questioned by Israeli interrogators since two months.

In a press release, the ministry of prisoners stated that prisoner Mohamed Hamdeo from Gaza, who was kidnapped in 1989 and is serving a life sentence, has joined the list of prisoners who served 20 years or more, thus raising the number of prisoners’ deans to 106 detainees.

Did Abbas, Dahlan conspire to murder Arafat?

Did Abbas, Dahlan conspire to murder Arafat?

[ 15/07/2009 - 11:26 PM ]

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

In an impromptu news conference in the Jordanian capital, Amman , on 12 July, Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddumi revealed that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan conspired to murder Yasser Arafat in connivance with Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Kaddumi disclosed that Arafat had confided to him the transcript of a secret meeting involving Abbas, Dahlan , US intelligence officials as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The meeting allegedly took place in March 22, 2004.

According to the document, whose authenticity couldn’t be verified independently, Sharon told Abbas and Dahlan during the meeting that Arafat should be killed by way of poisoning.

The transcript showed that Abbas protested, saying that murdering Arafat could complicate things and cause serious difficulties.

The Arabic version of the transcript showed Sharon saying the following to Abbas and Dahlan: 'To start with, we should kill all the military and political leaders of Hamas, Jihad, al-Aqsa Brigades and the Popular Front in order to create chaos within their ranks which would make it easier for you to finish them off.'

Sharon then allegedly responded to a suggestion by Dahlan to first abide by a 'period of calm' by saying:

'As long as Arafat is still sitting in the Muqata'a in Ramallah, you will definitely fail, because this cunning fox will surprise you all, as he has done in the past, because he knows exactly what you want to do and he will work to make it fail.'

Sharon then added the following: 'The first step therefore should be to poison Arafat and to kill him. I don't want to send him into exile unless there are guarantees from the country that will take him to place him under house arrest...'

Later on in the transcript, Sharon allegedly mentions the names of senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders to be assassinated, including Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was murdered by Israel on April 17, 2004.

The document presented by Kaddumi doesn’t spell out the ultimate Israeli-American goal behind the liquidation of Arafat and the top leaders of the resistance. However, it is probably safe to deduce that endgame envisaged behind the alleged conspiracy was the creation of a collaborationist Palestinian regime whose central mission and raison d’etre would be to bully the Palestinian masses into accepting a “peace deal” with Israel that would allow the latter to impose its will and conditions on the Palestinians.

Kaddumi is an important figure in Fatah, and it is difficult to dismiss his revelations as hallucinations as his opponents have done.

Non the less, it is hard to indict Abbas based on these revelations. However, it is also difficult to grant him a certificate of innocence, because Abbas is not beyond suspicion and is certainly not an impeccable figure.

I remember I spoke with Sakhr Habash, a close confidante of Yasser Arafat, two days before the latter’s death, who told me that he was 100% sure that “they killed him.”

I pressed him to identify the killers, the people he was referring to. He said “you know them, these people around him, the agents of Israel .”

Dahlan

While one is prompted to speak cautiously about Abbas’s alleged role in poisoning Arafat, that is if indeed the late Palestinian leader died of poisoning, one feels freer and more confident to speak about Dahlan’s not-so-secret treacherous dealings with the Israelis and the Americans.

A few years ago, I remember I listened to a secret audio-taped briefing by Dahlan to some of his supporters at the al-Hurriya Radio in Gaza .

In the briefing, Dahlan was heard swearing to make Hamas regret the day it decided to take part in the elections of 2006.

“I will make them eat..expletive.., and if any Fatah guy dares participate in the Hamas government, I will know how to deal with him.”

Dahlan made more horrifying remarks which one would prefer not mentioning because of their poor taste.

In 2008, the American magazine “Vanity Fair” published an extensive investigative report titled “How the Bush Administration Lied to Congress and Armed Fatah to Provoke Palestinian Civil War Aiming to overthrow Hamas.”

The report pointed out that the White House tried to organize the armed overthrow of the Hamas-led government after the Islamic liberation group swept Palestinian elections in 2006.

Obviously, Dahlan was the would-be coup leader whose job was to destroy Hamas, arrest or kill its leaders in collaboration with Israel .

According to the report, the Bush administration lied to Congress and boosted military support for Fatah in the aim of provoking a Palestinian civil war they thought Hamas would lose.

Vanity Fair dubbed the episode “Iran Contra 2”-a reference to the Reagan administration’s funding of the Nicaraguan Contras by covertly selling arms to Iran .

David Wurmser, a Bush administration official, was quoted in the report as saying hat he believed that “Hamas’s seizure of power in Gaza last year might have likely been a preemptive measure against the anticipated US-backed coup.”

In light, there is overwhelming evidence that Dahlan brazenly collaborated with the Israeli and American intelligence services against his own people just as it is amply clear that the current regime in Ramallah is collaborating, coordinating and conspiring with Israel to liquidate the resistance in the West Bank .

True, Abbas might argue that he played no part in plotting to murder Yasser Arafat. However, he and his regime in Ramallah can’t deny the fact that their security agencies, now trained and armed under the supervision of the American intelligence officer Keith Dayton, have been closely collaborating with Israel for the purpose of eradicating all resistance activists in the West Bank .

Indeed, the recent killings in Qalqilya recently was a damning proof, if a proof were needed, that the PA regime is just another layer of the Israeli occupation.

This, coupled with the unmitigated inquisition of hounding, repression, arrest, dismissal from jobs, seizure and closure of institutions as well as the rampancy of torture which in many instances lead to cruel death demonstrates that the PA is working in concert with Israel to harm and undermine national Palestinian interests.

This alone, and irrespective of who poisoned Arafat, is sufficient to indict the present leadership in Ramallah for collaboration with Israel and treason.



Qaddoumi reaffirms involvement of Abbas and Dahlan in killing Arafat

[ 16/07/2009 - 01:36 PM ]

AMMAN, (PIC)-- Farouq Al-Qaddoumi, the secretary-general of the Fatah central committee, on Wednesday renewed his charges against Mahmoud Abbas and Mohamed Dahlan of liquidating late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, stressing that he does not recognize the current Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership in Ramallah.

“I accused nobody, but I demonstrated minutes of meetings that took place between Ariel Sharon, Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Dahlan,” Qaddoumi underlined in a televised statement to Al-Jazeera satellite channel.

He also emphasized the credibility of the documents he revealed and dared the PA to prove otherwise.

In his reply to a question about the reason for not uncovering such information before, the Fatah leader said that he waited until he had more evidence about the PA’s conduct, adding that he also intended to reveal the documents during the sixth Fatah conference that could be held abroad, but after Abbas decided to hold it under the occupation, he found it necessary to reveal them at this time.

The Fatah leader also noted that he wrote a statement illustrating the violations of regulations and laws committed by Abbas in addition to other acts he did against the Palestinian people’s interests.

In a new development, an informed source affiliated with a Jordanian leftist party, told the Palestinian information center on condition of anonymity that Dahlan started to export his seditious ideas to the Jordanian street after he failed to do so in Palestine, affirming that Dahlan paid some writers working for newspapers in Jordan to market the idea of the alternative homeland.

The source also said that a number of Jordanian partisan figures started to convey messages to Jordanian officials deploring their silence towards Dahlan’s attempts to incite citizens against the Jordanian parties who refuse the alternative homeland for Palestinians and support their right to return to their land.

It pointed out that many Jordanian official and popular parties consider Dahlan a persona non grata in Jordan especially because of his collaboration with Israelis and Americans against his people.

“Israeli Warships in Suez Canal Prepare for Attack on Iran”

“Israeli Warships in Suez Canal Prepare for Attack on Iran”

Batoul Wehbe Readers Number : 309

16/07/2009 Israel's recent deployment of warships across the Red Sea should be seen as serious preparation for an attack on Iran, an Israeli defense official told the Times of London on Thursday. It came before long-range exercises by the Israeli air force in America later this month and the test of a missile defense shield at a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean.

"This is preparation that should be taken seriously. Israel is investing time in preparing itself for the complexity of an attack on Iran. These maneuvers are a message to Iran that Israel will follow up on its threats," the official was quoted as saying.

Earlier this week, two Israel Navy gunboats openly sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea.
The ships that passed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday were two Sa'ar 5 gunboats, the Hanit and the Eilat. This follows a similar incident in late June, when an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine passed through the canal, later returning the same way.

It is believed that Israel’s missile-equipped submarines, and its fleet of advanced aircraft, could be used to strike at in excess of a dozen nuclear-related targets more than 800 miles from Israel.

The move, apparently coordinated with Egypt, is seen as a warning message to Iran that Israeli naval vessels could reach waters off Iran in a matter of days without need to refuel through the red sea.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit confirmed that his Government explicitly allowed passage of Israeli vessels, and an Israeli admiral said that the drills were “run regularly with the full co-operation of the Egyptians.”

An Israeli diplomat told the Times that Israel has been bolstering its ties with certain Arab nations just as wary of the “Iranian nuclear threat”. In particular, the diplomat cited a "shared mutual distrust of Iran" between Israel and Egypt.

PALESTINIAN LAND, SETTLEMENT FREEZE; BUT IRAN STRIKE!

Israel will also soon test an Arrow interceptor missile on a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean. The system is designed to “defend Israel from ballistic missile attacks by Iran and Syria”. Lieutenant-General Patrick O’Reilly, the director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said that Israel would test against a target with a range of more than 630 miles (1,000km) — too long for previous Arrow test sites in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Israeli air force, meanwhile, will send F16C fighter jets to participate in exercises at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada this month. Israeli C130 Hercules transport aircraft will also compete in the Rodeo 2009 competition at McChord Air Force base in Washington.

“It is not by chance that Israel is drilling long-range maneuvers in a public way. This is not a secret operation. This is something that has been published and which will showcase Israel’s abilities,” said an Israeli defense official.

He added that in the past, Israel had run a number of covert long-range drills. A year ago, Israeli jets flew over Greece in one such drill, while in May, reports surfaced that Israeli air force aircraft were staging exercises over Gibraltar. An Israeli attack on a weapons convoy in Sudan bound for resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip earlier this year was also seen as a rehearsal for hitting moving convoys.

The exercises come at a time when Western diplomats are offering support for an Israeli strike on Iran in return for Israeli concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state.

If agreed it would make an Israeli strike on Iran realistic “within the year” Time quoted one British official.

According to the paper, diplomats said that Israel had offered concessions on settlement policy, Palestinian land claims and issues with neighboring Arab states, to facilitate a possible strike on Iran. “Israel has chosen to place the Iranian threat over its settlements,” said a senior European diplomat.

BIL'IN UNDER FIRE~ PEACEFUL RESISTANCE ASSAILED

Link

The North entrance into Bil'in, surrounded by fertile orchards

July 15, 2009
By Jennifer Urgilez
MIFTAH.org

The systematic arrest of Bil’in activists begins with the covert intrusion of Israeli soldiers into Bil’in at the stroke of midnight. From the west, soldiers cross the Separation Wall in military vehicles concealed under a blanket of darkness, each entering one by one in 10 minute intervals dropping off soldiers on the eastern side of the barrier.

Five to 30 soldiers, depending on the size of the military vehicle, jump off and immediately transition into combat-mode, laying close to the ground, managing to maneuver across the land on their elbows, while signaling the army car to recede back into isolation within two to three minutes of ensuring no opposition in sight.

From here, the soldiers clandestinely begin their operation towards the village in silence, veiled by the obscurity of night. They slowly proceed without flashlights, some wearing military camouflage paint while others, black masks.

The soldiers circumvent the most direct route into the heart of Bil’in, executing their mission through neglected back roads and fields, keeping a careful eye on the lookout for Palestinians, ready to drop and hide.

Often, the activists stand on their rooftops, attempting to catch the soldiers in the act and forewarning each other of the troops’ coming. Upon receiving word, Abdullah Abu Rahmah and other activists immediately get in their cars and pursue the predators only to find no evidence of their nearing.

Raids usually comprised of approximately 100 soldiers divided into groups of 20-30 men, each encircling the home of an accused stone-thrower at varying hours of the night, are ideal for operations in highly volatile regions, but not to detain a 16-year-old child taking part in a peaceful resistance movement.

Witnessing the injustices endured by the villagers of Bil’in as detonated tear gas bombs adorn the eastern side of the wall relates the oppression of occupation under which Palestinians are subjected.

A timeless image, this could be today, it could be 2000 years ago. THIS life is what the people of Bil'in peacefully struggle to protect for themselves.

Even while its backdrop tells its tale, it was not until my interview of Abdullah Abu Rahmah, a local Bil’in villager and organizing member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, that this story of their subjugation to Israeli raids and arrests became known.

Cognizant of Israel’s tightening grip over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely as a response to the Aqsa Intifada, the villagers of Bil’in have shunned away from armed struggle, and instead, banded in uniform as a peaceful, nonviolent resistance to the Separation Wall.

The night time arrest of an American supporter.

Setting the ground for the annexation of 49% of Bil’in territory into Israel, the Separation Wall, far from the 1949 Armistice Line, snakes well into the West Bank isolating 1,968 of Bil’in’s 4,040 dunums, or 486 of its 998 acres of land.

The inception of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall in January of 2005 afforded activists ripe ground for the genesis of peaceful, Friday demonstrations reminiscent of Women in Black’s non-violent vigils in Israel demanding the “end of the occupation.”

Visibly violent protesters, in action against the Wall.

Emblematic of the overall catastrophe befallen Palestinians, activists from all walks of life ~ Palestinian, Israeli, and international ~ unite in the struggle against economic strangulation, occupation, and apartheid.

From resisting the uprooting of olive trees for the construction of the wall, to blockading the bulldozers from gaining entrance to Bil’in roads, to building a small edifice in the midst of dusk between the Modi’in Illit settlement bloc and the Separation Wall to secure access to their lands, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall refuses to allow the Israeli military to tiptoe around UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the International Court of Justice July 2004 ruling declaring Israel’s Separation Wall and Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in breach of international humanitarian law.

The soldiers start firing, everybody runs.

Fighting the occupation two-dimensionally, through legal contestments and nonviolent public activism, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall has monitored and challenged the construction of the barrier every step of the way, cornering the government of Israel in its own courtroom.

In his judgment of September 4, 2007, President D. Beinisch of the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that the government of Israel must implement an alternative route of the separation barrier on Bil’in land relinquishing both agricultural land in the Dolev riverbed and terrain seized for future development of the eastern region of the Mattityahu settlement.

A home commandeered for strategic purposes.

Irrespective of the Israeli High Court of Justice’s decree, the Israeli government has not rerouted the barrier, rather finalized its erection, depicting the already-suspected disconnect between the Israeli government’s judicial and military branches. Inferring from President Beinisch’s judgment and Israeli military operations, settlement growth, and not security motives, lay at the heart of Israeli expansionist policy.

Despite the brokering of the Oslo Accords in 1993 partitioning the West Bank into three distinct security enclaves ~ Area A under absolute Palestinian Authority (PA) control, Area B under PA civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C under complete Israeli military control ~ as Mr. Abu Rahmah denotes, “Nothing is Area A, everything is Area C.” Commencing on June 23, 2009, the Israeli military initiated its most recent string of raids into the village of Bil’in in spite of its Area A demarcations.

If caught and/or identified, these lads risk serious jail time in Israel.

In the past three weeks, 15 youth activists have been detained ~ 3 Palestinians, one Israeli, and one American ~ and scores injured at Friday’s peaceful demonstration with sound bombs, tear gas canisters, rubber-coated bullets, and a foul-smelling chemical spray, a clear use of excessive force against unarmed protesters.

Hence, regardless of the detainee’s culpability, an entire military unit is not needed to arrest one individual. Judging from their actions, the Israeli military’s goal is psychological warfare ~ the brewing of helplessness and terror among Bil’in’s 1,800 residents aimed at freezing the resistance.

It must be Friday again.

Surrounding the house, destroying everything in their path, and even confiscating the detainee’s mobile phone at 3:00am can certainly break Palestinian morale. Luma, Mr. Abu Rahmah’s seven-year-old daughter, depicts the constant panic in which these children live.

This brave girl suffers frequently from panic attacks due to Israeli night forays into her neighbourhood, taking away her older playmates.

As of late, Luma awakes in the middle of the night, sometimes in screams and tears, calling out for her father. Luma’s sleepless nights are illustrative of the emotional and psychological despair of children in conflict.

Moreover, in their attempts to dismantle the movement, the Israeli military specifically targets the youth. For example, on June 23 and 25 of 2009, four children were detained ranging from 16-17 years of age, who during interrogation were forced to release the names of peace activists and information related to the movement’s organizing body.

In response, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, recognizing that the children do not have “experience” in these types of matters, gathered all the youths and with the assistance of a lawyer, “trained” the children on how to act during an Israeli interrogation, and further instructed them not to answer any questions ~“I don’t want to speak. I have rights.”

If the systematic arrest and injuring of activists is the military’s methodological plan to demolish the movement, it fails to understand the struggle’s resilience ~ “If they want to arrest us all, they can. But our wives and children will continue the struggle,” admits Abdullah Abu Rahmah.

On April 19, 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a peaceful demonstrator, was shot in the chest with a tear gas bomb during one of Bil’in’s nonviolent, Friday protests. Thus, if neither the murder of Abu Rahmah, Abdullah’s extended family member, nor the 1,300 injuries and 60 arrests endured by activists has broken their spirits, virtually nothing can affect them now.

As Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi pursued satyagraha ~ nonviolence ~ in his quest for Indian independence, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall too employs this philosophy in the pursuit of achieving Palestinian sovereignty and absolute freedom from Israeli occupation.

The picture is clear: concessions to Israeli “democratic” values and security modus operandi deprive Palestinians of their inalienable human rights.

Our common humanity generates a moral duty to uphold the United Nations’ explicit benchmark for an occupying power’s conduct in its occupied territories. Despite big brother’s backing in the Security Council, Israel is not absolved of its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War ~ the Separation Wall and settlement activity in the West Bank indeed constitute war crimes.

The international community needs to stop playing big-power politics and start dodging the aura of taboo accompanying espousal of the Palestinian plight ~ accountability is a must and exoneration, pure blasphemy.

PHOTOS COURTESY of PALESTINE REMEMBERED

Posted by Barbara L at 7:59 AM Labels: Activist, Bilin, Illegal Occupation, Palestine, PEACE, zionists

Three Years on Victory, Israel Still Wants to Silence Al-Manar!

Three Years on Victory, Israel Still Wants to Silence Al-Manar!
Hussein Assi Readers Number : 42


16/07/2009 Three years after the building of Al-Manar Television was destroyed, the Resistance's voice seems to be always one of the main targets for the Israeli enemy…

On that day in 2006, Israel leveled the Manar TV building in an attempt to silence the station during the war.

Al-Manar's broadcast stopped for less than five minutes and then resumed as usual from undisclosed locations, what perplexed the enemy who failed throughout the aggression to silence the "Station of the Resistance".

It was necessary for the Israeli enemy to silence Al-Manar for many reasons on top of which is Israel's endeavor to spare itself a media war that could eventually expose its crimes, save its already cracking community from another psychological war and inspire the Lebanese people with its steadfastness.

However Israel failed in its strategy against Al-Manar and this is why Israeli analysts are nowadays renewing recommendations of sparing all possible efforts to silence Al-Manar during any future war against Lebanon.

According to Israeli experts and observers, Al-Manar has always constituted one of the main arms in the psychological war against the Israeli society during the Israeli occupation of Lebanese lands and following the Palestinian Intifada, what increased the level of calls to achieve withdrawal from Lebanon.

Moreover, Israeli website Omedia broadcasted a study in which it described Al-Manar TV as one of the war's "excellent" arms. "Al-Manar used to have detailed plans on how to deal with all developments," the study said, noting that "the non-necessary employees left the building since the war's first moment while others moved to under floor locations." The study also recalled that Al-Manar's broadcast stopped for less than five minutes after being destroyed and then resumed as usual from locations that remained undisclosed until now.

The Israeli study said that the Israeli forces faced many obstacles in destroying the terrestrial channel's infrastructure because of the difficulty of differentiating Al-Manar's broadcasting stations from the other Lebanese stations. The study added that Al-Manar's steadfastness was a major achievement despite all shelling and bombardment that made the victory of Hezbollah a concrete reality.

As a conclusion, the Israeli study recommended that Israeli officials spare all possible efforts to silence Al-Manar during the next war and consider the Lebanese channel "a major weapon in the hands of the enemy." According to the study, "it's not enough to bombard the channel to shut it down," calling on all concerned people in the Israeli enemy to work to prevent the Lebanese channel from broadcasting through frequency receivers whatever the price was.

Furthermore, the study also called for cooperating with the Lebanese government to suspend the terrestrial diffusion of Al-Manar!

Israel's Fairytale Blocks Middle East Peace

Link

This appears to be another case of ancient bloody myths contributing to a modern bloody reality.

This is an excellent piece and analysis published at Middle East Online by Robert Parry who was responsible for breaking many of the Iran-Contra Affair stories among other things. He discusses the “Israeli Myths” or Three Pillars of the State Of Israel. These “Pillars” and “Myths” have created this most untenable situation of continuing war with Israel’s neighbours in the Middle East and rests directly on the premise of the Jewish State itself. He examines this from the perspective of a new book by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, titled: “ When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” The book debunks the Myth of Rome removing the Jews from the Holy Land causing them to be scattered across Europe.

For me, this is yet another example of people with an agenda high jacking and perverting religion to serve their political purpose. Today we see much of this, those who excel at this technique, can immediately garner millions of followers and support. We see it in the Muslim Religion with groups like Al Qaeda who attack Christians AND Muslims, We see it in Christian Religion with people like Hagee and the other Zio-Christian fanatics who bomb abortion clinics and kill their workers, whilst at the same time comdemning the killing of unborn children (who may have grown up to work in a clinic, how Ironic!), we see it in the Jewish Religion in many places, such as the radical Zionist nutjobs who set off bombs in New York City. In Ireland we have seen religion used as a rallying cry against the native Irish population using Death Squads to murder the Native people for hundreds of years. This continues to some degree even today, with what has become known as "Ulster Protestantism." Another feature of these fanatic high jacked religious groups, is that the old religion names no longer serve the purpose, they are re-named to fit the times (Or the Agenda); "Born Again Christians" "Zionists" "Ulster Protestantism" etc.

So, like everything else in modern society, religion has been high jacked by subversive groups, many with political agendas, and it has become more about winning a political cause, than entering heaven. And sadly the followers have not a clue they are being used...........Here is a good portion of the lengthy analysis, a link is provided at the end for the entire piece:

Ancient Israeli Myths Deter Peace

As recently as Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, the myth of the Diaspora was used to justify the slaughter of some 1,400 Palestinians dead, including many children and other non-combatants. When the Israeli government investigated alleged war crimes by its army, Israeli troops testified that extremist Rabbis had proclaimed the invasion a holy war, notes Robert Parry.

The rationale for formally designating Israel a Jewish state – as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now demands – rests on three religious-political pillars: God’s purported covenant with Moses instructing the ancient Israelites to conquer the land, the injustice of the Roman-era Diaspora that supposedly removed them centuries later, and the brutal persecution of European Jews in the Holocaust.

Yet, two of these pillars – Moses conveying God’s covenant to the Israelites and the Roman Diaspora – appear based on almost no historical reality, the stuff of legend and possibly even lies that crumble under any serious scrutiny.

Netanyahu’s new demand means that these myths now threaten peace in the Middle East and conceivably could push the modern world into more bloody warfare.

Therefore, they must be given fresh examination.

the Holocaust is not in historical dispute. That horrible reality – an industrial-style extermination campaign that also targeted Gypsies, homosexuals and Communists –was proven after the World War II from a multitude of Nazi records, photographs and eyewitness accounts

It is the tales of Moses from the Torah (or the first five books of the Old Testament) and the legend of the Roman Diaspora that lack serious historical underpinnings.

The Diaspora myth has been addressed in a new book by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? It debunks the notion that Rome removed the Jewish people en masse from the Holy Land in the First and Second Centuries A.D. and scattered them across Europe.

Instead, most East European Jews appear to be descendents of converts, principally from the Kingdom of the Khazars in eastern Russia, who embraced Judaism in the Eighth Century, A.D.

Thus, Sand argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the land. According to Sand, a bitter irony of Israel’s founding may be that it displaced Palestinians who could be the actual descendants of the ancient Israelites, who stayed on the land and eventually converted to Islam.

Other descendants of those ancient Israelites maintained Judaism as a strong presence in the Middle East, both in Palestine and in successful communities from Egypt to Iraq and Iran. These Jews faced few religious pressures until after Israel was founded in 1948, when this new European intrusion into Islamic lands was viewed in the context of the Crusades a millennium ago.

The Moses Myth

Yet, while questioning the Diaspora myth is a sensitive topic for many Israelis and their supporters around the world, it is even touchier to challenge the Biblical claim that God, through Moses, struck a covenant with the Israelites to conquer the land and possess it for all time.

Because the Torah is sacred to Jews – and to many Christians as the revealed word of God in the Old Testament – it has been dangerous to examine the factual history behind these texts in an objective manner.

Modern Biblical scholars now agree that Moses was not the author of the Torah, that the stories were passed down orally from the 14th Century B.C. and were put into writing centuries later. But the legendary figure of Moses has remained almost beyond criticism, not only for many Jews but for people of the Christian and Islamic faiths.

Many Americans think of Moses as the angry but righteous leader as portrayed by Charlton Heston in the 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments,” or they think of their feel-good Bible studies as children. Yet, many archaeologists believe that the Moses stories were largely made up.

“This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Isrealites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel,” summed up Professor Ze’ev Herzog, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.

“The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites’ presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus.” Nevertheless, because of the powerful influence of the Torah (and the Old Testament), the biblical Moses carries extraordinary religious and historical weight, inspiring Israeli settlers to claim Palestinian lands as rightfully theirs and rallying fundamentalist Christians across the American heartland to embrace whatever actions the Israelis take.

Though Moses is regarded by many as a great law giver (the Ten Commandants) and as a major force in the formation of monotheism (the belief in one God), the text of the Torah present him as a cruel and tyrannical leader.

From a modern perspective, Moses might be viewed as a “dictator who killed his own people” when they disobeyed him and an advocate of genocide against outsiders. His claims that he spoke with the Lord sound more like a megalomaniac who believed he could scare a primitive people into following his orders by claiming they were edicts from God.

Indeed, over the centuries, many tyrants have used religion (especially monotheism) to justify repression and to eliminate enemies and rivals. The religious wars in Europe during the Middle Ages are a classic example of how kings and popes wrapped their personal power in the bloody cloak of religion, torturing and burning alive “heretics” who wouldn’t submit.

In Exodus, for instance, there is the famous story of the Israelites creating a visible idol of their God in the form of a golden calf while Moses is absent on Mount Sinai. When Moses returns with stone tablets conveying laws of behavior, he is furious and smashes the tablets.

According to the Torah, Moses then grinds up the golden calf, mixes it with water and makes the Israelites drink it. Then, Moses recruits what we would today call a “death squad.”

The Torah reads: “Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, to me!’ And the Levites gathered round him. And he said to them, ‘Thus said the Lord God of Israel, “Put every man his sword on his thigh, and cross over and back from gate to gate in the camp, and each man kill his brother and each man his fellow and each man his kin”’ And the Levites did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell on that day.”

In other words, Moses ordered a massacre of Israelites whom he regarded as his enemies, people who had challenged his authority in the form of dancing around the golden calf.

The Diaspora Myth

The second pillar – the Roman Diaspora – also comes from ancient times though not as far back as the stories of Moses. If anything, however, the Diaspora has less of a historical basis.

In When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, Dr. Sand, an expert on European history at the University of Tel Aviv, says the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that the myth of the Diaspora was used by Zionists over the past century to buttress their argument for creating Israel.

Sand, a European Jew born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in Austria, argues that until the Zionist movement arose, Jews thought of themselves as Jews because they shared a common religion, not because they possessed a direct lineage to the ancient tribes of Israel.

However, at the turn of the 20th Century, Sand asserts, Zionist Jews began assembling a national history to justify creation of a Jewish state by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion and that they had primogeniture over the territory that had become known as Palestine.

The Zionists also invented the idea that Jews living in exile were obligated to return to the Promised Land, a concept that had been foreign to Judaism, Sand states.

If Sand’s thesis is correct – and it has faced no substantive rebuttal – it would suggest that many of the Palestinian Arabs have a far more substantial claim to the lands of Israel than do many European Jews who arrived there asserting a God-given claim.

Indeed, Sand theorizes that many Jews, who remained in Judea after Roman legions crushed the last uprising in 136 A.D., eventually converted to Christianity or Islam, meaning that the Palestinians who have been crowded into Gaza or concentrated in the West Bank might be direct descendants of Jews from the Roman era.

In his book – and in an interview with Haaretz about his book – Sand challenged the myth that the Romans relocated the Jews by force to Europe. In the interview, he said:

"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country.

“The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th Century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."

The True Descendants

Asked if he was saying that the true descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians, Sand responded:

"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents.

“The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-1939], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled.

“Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"

But there can be no doubt that the story of the Diaspora has played a key role in the founding of Israel and that the appeal of this powerful narrative has helped generate sympathy around the world, especially in the United States.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom," reads the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

As recently as Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, the myth of the Diaspora was used to justify the slaughter of some 1,400 Palestinians dead, including many children and other non-combatants. When the Israeli government investigated alleged war crimes by its army, Israeli troops testified that extremist Rabbis had proclaimed the invasion a holy war.

The troops said the Rabbis brought them booklets and articles declaring: “We are the Jewish people. We came to this land by a miracle. God brought us back to this land, and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has insisted on a new precondition for talks – that the Palestinians must agree to a “public, binding and unequivocal” recognition that Israel is “the nation state of the Jewish people,” not simply the nation state of the people of Israel. Netanyahu is making this demand although Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

This appears to be another case of ancient bloody myths contributing to a modern bloody reality.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com

Posted by irish4palestine at 5:00 PM

Labels: christians, fanatics, insane people, judaism, middle east peace, muslims, religion, robert parry, subversive religious groups, zionists are nazis