Enough is Enough by Gilad Atzmon

Link

Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 6:31PM Gilad Atzmon

The UK Jewish Chronicle is apparently stupid enough to unveil the ferocity of Zionist lobbying within the British Government and its corridors of power. The Jewish weekly is happy to outline the relentless measures that are being taken by Jewish lobbyists in order to Zionise the British legal system and its value system.

As one may assume the supporters of Israel in Britain are far from happy about Britain’s magistrates being able to implement ‘universal jurisdiction’ laws, laws that allow local magistrates to issue arrest warrants for high profile foreign visitors accused of war crimes. The rabid Zionist Jewish Chronicle is obviously outraged because universal jurisdiction puts most of the Israeli political and military echelon at a severe risk. Last month ex Israeli Foreign minister Mrs. Tzipi Livini cancelled her visit to Britain over fears that arrest warrants would be issued in connection with accusations of war crimes under laws of universal jurisdiction.

Surely universal jurisdiction is not a bad thing. It is actually an ethically orientated idea that is there to prevent world leaders from abusing their powers and committing crimes against humanity. It is also there to chase war criminals and to stop them from celebrating their freedom. Yet, it is not very surprising that the only political lobby in Britain that acts against such a set of universal laws is the Zionist lobby.

While in the past Zionist activists tried to hide their conspiratorial actions, JC political editor Martin Bright and Chief editor Stephen Pollard are providing us with a glimpse into the Jewish relentless political activity here. “Will the government ever act?” they ask in their latest editorial as if the British government has to act in order to satisfy the Zionist will.

Interestingly enough, the JC editors do not offer a single ideological, ethical or legal argument suggesting what is wrong with laws of universal jurisdiction except suggesting that it is not good for the Jews or Israel.

The JC is rather outraged with Justice Secretary Jack Straw who apparently fails to bow to Israeli pressure. Considering Jack Straw is of  Jewish descent, the JC must believe that it is entitled to use some measures to put him in the line of fire. In spite of the fact that Straw is known in Britain for his notorious call for Muslim women to remove their veils and also as a backer of the illegal invasion of Iraq. The JC blames Straw for being too friendly with Muslims. “Mr Straw is known to be highly sensitive to the views of his Muslim constituents in Blackburn and is close to the Muslim Council of Britain, which opposes a change to the law.”
The JC should have also accepted the fact that, bearing in mind Straw’s Jewish origin, it is just natural for him to be reluctant to put a change into British law that is there to solely to serve Israeli interests and stands in total opposition to every universal and ethical value.

According to the JC, the Jews of Britain should not be too worried. The Shadow Middle East minister David Lidington is already in their pockets. ”This has to be sorted and quickly”, says the shadow man. “It is very clear to me that this issue is doing serious damage to relations with Israel”.
The JC also assures its Zionist readers that they have a man within the government who is working hard serving their interests willingly and even enthusiastically. David Miliband, the British foreign minister who is also listed as an “Israeli Propaganda (Hasbara) author’ on an Israeli official Hasbara site already announced his intention to change the law late last year. According to the JC he is “pushing hard within Whitehall for a solution”. Earlier this month, says the JC “the Foreign Office briefed that an announcement of the law change was imminent”. I wouldn’t except less from a listed ‘Hasbara author’
 But the JC is taking it even further. In its JC Opinion editorial it says it is “Crystal clear who is to blame” referring to Justice Secretary Straw and PM Brown

 “The time for excuses is over”, says the paper. “For weeks the government has been giving every possible off-the-record promise that it would change the law on universal jurisdiction. No longer would unsuitable magistrates be able to issue warrants for the arrest of some of our closest allies”. One may wonder why exactly ‘on the record’ genocidal murderers such as Livni, Barak or Olmert should be considered as ‘Britain closest allies’. In fact these people are primary enemies of humanity and as such they are also the enemy of Britain and any other  nation.

Seemingly, the JC, doesn’t just talk on behalf of its editors. For some reason it prefers to talk in the name of the ‘Jewish community’. “Mr Straw must take the Jewish community for mugs if he thinks his behaviour is not transparent”. The only possible interpretation of this statement is that British Jewry wants Britain to give up on universal Jurisdiction just to appease its Zionists.

In case PM Brown is slightly confused and doesn’t know how to react, the JC is there to tell him how he should run Britain just to keep the Jewish community happy. “As for the Prime Minister: all he has ever needed to do is make clear that he backs Mr Miliband, and the issue would have been over”. Considering Miliband is listed as an ‘Israeli Propaganda author’ the message here is clear. Britain better start to work for Israel and even change its laws accordingly so it can easily comply with Israeli unethical conduct.

Britain is heading towards election, and the JC is advising PM Brown that he is about to pay the ultimate political price for his unwillingness to succumb to the Zionist will. “That he (PM Brown) has done precisely nothing since promising action speaks volumes about his own bona fides. If - and now it looks like when - the deadline for action passes and nothing is done, it will be crystal clear who is to blame.”
In plain language the JC is suggesting that PM Brown as far as the Jews are concerned, is basically finished. I wonder how long it will take for British people to wake up and say enough is enough. How long will it take before they say NO to Israeli and Zionist infiltration into their politics, laws and value system.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

“Israel” Ignores Demand to Probe Gaza War

Via Silver Lining

Posted on January 30, 2010 by realistic bird

Al Manar

30/01/2010 Israel on Friday submitted to the United Nations its first official response to the Goldstone Report, which accused Tel Aviv of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the Ynet Website said.

According to Yedioth Aharonoth’s Website,the response did not address the international demand to appoint an independent commission of inquiry into the Gaza operation.

Israel stressed that the document was not a direct response to the report, which Jerusalem refuses to acknowledge, but an answer to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s inquiry on Israel’s conduct during the operation.

In the document, Israel compared between its ‘handling of terrorism’ operated from within a population and other Western militaries forced to deal with similar situations.

The document included updated on Israeli army investigations and emphasized that Israel views legal proceedings and doing justice as highly important.

The document is a response to the UN secretary-general, who gave the involved parties in September three months to provide their responses to the Goldstone Report. Ban is expected to present his stand on the matter next Friday.

Israel will decide whether to appoint an independent commission of inquiry in accordance with the international community’s demand.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak and army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi object to such a committee. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is in favor of appointing such a committee in order to minimize additional damage, including fear that the matter would be handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to decide on the matter.

The human rights council had urged the UN General Assembly to debate the Goldstone report and then refer the alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. That proposal has been not been acted upon so far. Instead, the General Assembly asked for its own report based on submissions from both sides – following another recommendation from the 547-page Goldstone report that both Israel and Hamas conduct their own investigations.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority also submitted its first response to the Goldstone Report to the UN. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative at the UN, told reporters he had presented to the organization’s secretariat a letter from Palestinian President Salam Fayyad.

He said the letter was accompanied by documents, including a presidential order on the establishment of a commission of inquiry including five judges and external experts.

Mansour noted that the documents include “an initial report” prepared by the committee, but did not elaborate on its content. Asked about Hamas’ response to the report, he clarified that the documents handed over to the UN were the Palestinian government’s official response. Mansour stated that the PA intended to investigate alleged Hamas war crimes.

The Goldstone report charged both Israel and Hamas with war crimes, as well as acts that amounted to crimes against humanity. The UN report found that the conflict was dominated by Israel’s military superiority, had killed 1,400 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to properties in Gaza.

Hamas has rejected claims that it committed war crimes, saying Thursday that it had not deliberately targeted Israeli civilians with the rocket fire from Gaza.

Compared to more than 1400 Palestinians killed in the Gaza offensive, most of which were civilians, the use of internationally banned phosphorus shells in populated areas, and the execution of civilians after ordering them out of their

Filed under: Caricature, Politics | Tagged: attack, Caricature, cartoon, crimes against humanity, Gaza, Goldstone report, Israeli crimes, Israeli policies, palestine, Palestinians, war crimes | Leave a Comment »
River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

IS YOUTUBE FINALLY PREPARED TO SHOW THE TRUTH?

DesertPeace

January 30, 2010 at 11:07 am

An increase in the activities in Occupied East Jerusalem has apparently sparked enough interest throughout the world for YouTube to agree not to pull the videos off the Web. Could we be seeing an end to their zionist censorship? Let’s hope so…..

The (Sheikh Jarrah) revolution will be YouTubed

By ABE SELIG

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are playing an increasing role in growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies.

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.
“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.
Below is one example of a recent video not pulled from YouTube… (my comment)




Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.

“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”

“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”

Others echoed Remez’s comments, but added that another advantage of social media was its ability to counter police statements about Sheikh Jarrah they said the mainstream media often parroted.

“This is an issue that the media hasn’t really been covering, and when they have, they’ve mostly relied on police statements that portrayed the protesters as a handful of extreme leftists or anarchists, which is simply not true,” said Lisa Goldman, a Tel-Aviv based freelance journalist who has used Facebook, Twitter and blogs to follow the Sheikh Jarrah protests.

“What the social media outlets have been able to provide is a direct source of information that isn’t filtered through the mainstream media,” she said, adding that in this vein, the use of new media had been “absolutely crucial.”

Additionally, Goldman added, social media outlets had also served as a tool to awaken the mainstream Left to the goings-on in Sheikh Jarrah, including, but not limited to, the emerging issue of police behavior towards protesters there, which the Jerusalem Magistrate Court has even censured – ruling last week that the arrests of 17 protesters during a rally two weeks ago was illegal.

“The silent Israeli Left is finally waking up,” she said. “And it’s a result of the way some young people are using social media. It’s been very effective in raising awareness among the moderate Left, who are seeing that the police are suppressing free speech.”

Goldman also pointed to the participation in last Friday’s rally of Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped draft the IDF code of ethics and who has been active in disputing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report, as an example of figures who would certainly not be considered extreme, but who have joined the Sheikh Jarrah fray.

Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Human Rights in Israel and one of the 17 protesters arrested two weeks ago, added that the use of new media to circumvent the mainstream media, which, he said, was often “reluctant to cover hard issues, or blatantly hostile,” was spreading rapidly.

“However, it’s not just new media [at play in Sheikh Jarrah],” he said. “I think there’s a need to [step back] from the tactics being used there, and zoom in on the core issue, which is the moral outrage of Jerusalemite families being thrown out of their homes and living in tents in the street. That’s the essential injustice here, and I think it’s a fuel of its own.”
Yet El-Ad did concede that the use of new media was a driving force behind the success of the Sheikh Jarrah protest organizers.

“They are a courageous group of young people, who are functioning without any real budget or resources,” he said. “But they are cleverly online, and they’ve been able to translate that into real movement on the ground – it’s not just a Facebook group that people add their names too.”
“Yes, the mobilization happens online,” El-Ad added, “but the end result is the most classic form of civil protest.”
Source

Also see THIS related post about the ongoing demonstrations.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

China suspends military ties with US

Press TV

Posted on January 30, 2010 by realistic bird

Sat, 30 Jan 2010, Press TV

China suspends military exchanges with the US and threatens to impose sanctions on US arms companies over a Washington decision to sell weapons to Taiwan.

China’s Defense Ministry suspended military exchange visits with the US, saying the suspension was “in consideration of the serious harm and impacts [of the 6.4-billion-dollar US-Taiwan arms deal] on Sino-US military relations.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry also threatened to impose sanctions on US firms that sell weapons to Taiwan amid straining relations between Washington and Beijing.

“China will also impose corresponding sanctions on US companies that engage in weapons sales to Taiwan,” the ministry said on Saturday.

“The United States must be responsible for the serious repercussions if it does not immediately reverse the mistaken decision to sell Taiwan weapons,” Chinese deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei told the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.

The arms sale includes Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, mine hunter ships and information technology.

US Congress has 30 days to comment before the plan goes forward. Lawmakers traditionally have supported such sales.

Saturday’s measure is the second such suspension, since the former Bush administration in 2008 announced a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan.

Relations between the two countries have been strained as President Barack Obama plans to meet with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, later this year.

More complications could affect President Hu Jintao’s expected visit to the US this year, as well as talks on human rights that Obama and Hu had agreed to continue, a Press TV correspondent reported.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Israel spied on Iran, Syria from secret Turkish base

Press TV

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:06:54 GMT

Revelations of a secret Israeli spy base, which was allegedly set up in Ankara to gather classified information on Iran and Syria, has dragged Tel Aviv into a new spy scandal.

Sources in Turkey's ruling party told Russia's Mignews that Israeli spy agents ran an advanced electronic monitoring station from the Ankara military headquarters to keep tabs on communication networks in Iran and Syria.

According to the sources who were speaking on condition of anonymity, the Signals Intelligence station was solely managed by Israeli intelligence personnel and had become off-limits for members of the Turkish government.

Israeli military sources have refused to comment on the revelations, which are likely to spark an outcry in Turkey, now that they have been leaked to newspapers and media outlets.

This is not the first time Israel finds itself at the centre of a major spy scandal.

For years Israeli politicians have masterminded a wave of undercover operations and terror plots in numerous countries, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Switzerland, and the US.

However, much of Israel's espionage operations are focused on the Tehran government, largely because of Iran's uranium enrichment activities, which is seen by Israel as a mortal threat.

Israel, which is reported to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear warheads itself, accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and routinely threatens to reduce the country's enrichment sites to rubble.

This is while Iran, unlike Israel, is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has opened its enrichment facilities to UN inspection.

In mid-2009, Israeli President Shimon Peres paid a visit to Azerbaijan, one of Iran's northern neighbors, and reportedly managed to persuade the Baku government into signing an unspecified "document" on the construction of a plant in Azerbaijan to manufacture spyware, satellite projects and pilotless military vehicles.

Israeli daily Haaretz quoted former Israeli Ambassador to Baku Arthur Lenk as saying that the deal got through after four years of negotiations.

US analysts believe Israel, having failed to win US support for a military attack on Iran, is now seeking to derail Iran's uranium enrichment program by other means.

"With cooperation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key assets involved in the nuclear program and the sabotaging of the Iranian nuclear supply chain," said Reva Bhalla, director of analysis with Strategic Forecasting also known as Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence company with close links to the US security establishment.

Bhalla claims that Israeli operatives target Iranian nuclear scientists as part of efforts to intimidate Iranians and prevent them from continuing enrichment work. She goes as far as saying that there was "strong intelligence" that one of Iran's leading nuclear physicists, Ardeshir Hassanpour, was killed by the Mossad in January 2007.

Dr. Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, another Iranian nuclear scientist, is also believed to be assassinated by Israel's Mossad spy agency in the Iranian capital, Tehran on January 12.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Fox News: the most trusted, most ideological network in America

Via Pulse

Sarah Palin, John McCain's former running mate during the 2009 US presidential election, is shown here displaying her trademark wink. Palin joined Fox News as a "political commentator" earlier this month.

On January 28th, right-wing Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly boasted that “Forty-nine percent of Americans, half the country, trust the Fox News Channel.”  O’Reilly based his statements on a recent Public Policy Polling survey conducted by telephone:

That’s a rout. By a huge majority, Americans now believe the Fox News Channel is the most honest purveyor of information in the country.

The survey is also accompanied by the following statement:

Predictably there is a large party split on this with 74% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying they trust the right leaning network.

Fox News, which insists that it provides “fair and balanced” coverage (one of its official taglines), has been criticized from all fronts for being deeply biased and right-wing leaning in its reporting.  Accordingly, in October 2009 the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (an independent, non-partisan public opinion research organization) released findings indicating that Fox News is also viewed as the most “ideological network” in the United States, a result which Fox News supporters embrace.
What can we derive from these two surveys, conducted within a few months of each other, if they are accurate?  Here’s a start: if Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States, then it is trusted because it reaffirms the opinions of its audience.  Dean Debnam, the President of Public Policy Polling, concurs:

A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news…But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.

Ed Pilkington expands on this idea in the Guardian, where he includes that even members of the Murdoch family have admitted to Fox News’ bias:

Earlier this month the PR executive Matthew Freud, who is married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, told the New York Times he was “ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of journalistic standards”.

Roger Ailes, a former media consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, and George W. Bush, is the American president of the the Fox News Channel.

Earlier this month Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan based a show on the role of the media in the United States, and opened with statistical findings indicating that US foreign policy coverage by mainstream news outlets has been in decline over the years.  Khan asked progressive media veteran Amy Goodman and journalism academic John Maxwell Hamilton why the majority of Americans don’t appear to be as interested in international news events as they are in local affairs, and discussed the extent to which “junk news” and tabloidism dominate news outlet output.  Fox News was not a focal point throughout the show, but it would be interesting to know how the commentators would have categorized the cable and satellite news network, which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, a multi-billion dollar media and entertainment broadcasting empire.
Interestingly, Pilkington also notes that:

The poll findings are vindication of the commercial strategy of Fox News..Fox News threw out the old model of television news – pitched towards a mass audience across the political spectrum and aspiring to standards of fairness in reporting – and replaced it with an aggressive drive for a niche audience of rightwing voters.

This “aggressive drive” is heavily permeated with what many viewers (right-wing or not) consider “entertaining,” something which should also be considered when trying to derive the reasons for Fox News’s high viewer numbers.
Pinkington adds:

As further evidence of its pre-eminence, Glenn Beck, the network’s most strident and emotive of rightwing hosts, was this week voted second favourite TV personality in the annual Harris Poll, behind only Oprah Winfrey.

In case you are unsure about how much of Fox News is entertainment and how much of it is news, consider the following clips which in no way deviate from their normative standard.  By the way, the “instant sadness” that Glenn Beck displays in the third clip (a behind-the-scenes look at a photo shoot he did for a magazine) is strikingly similar to the tear works that he displays on his ”news” show.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

EL-SARRAJ: Gaza’s agony

Via Australians For Palestine

January 30, 2010

A year after the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are still waiting for President Obama’s deeds to match his rhetoric in the Middle East.

by Eyad El-Sarraj  -  Foreign Policy -  28 January 2010

On the night Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency, he announced: “To all those … who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world … a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you…. The true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”
Obama’s words made the world shiver with anticipation.

One year later, anticipation has turned to disappointment. The U.S. president’s first State of the Union address coincides roughly with the anniversary of the end of Operation Cast Lead, the devastating Israeli military offensive on Gaza last winter. And yet Obama said nothing. During that assault, shuddering under ordnance dropped or fired by American-made F-16s, we Palestinians felt abandoned by the soon-to-be president. We recalled the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who maintained, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

The sting of the White House’s ongoing silence is devastating. Obama has remained a passive bystander as Israel has declared a faux freeze of settlements, arrested nonviolent civil society leaders, and denied desperate Palestinians, living in woeful conditions in Gaza, the basic necessities of livelihood.
Visitors to Gaza — those few permitted in by Israel and Egypt — are horrified at the scale of the human toll and widespread destruction. U.N. Justice Richard Goldstone concluded that war crimes might have been committed. Yet Obama has only broken his silence to defend Israeli war crimes by stifling the Goldstone report.

During Obama’s presidential campaign, he visited the Israeli city of Sderot and had no qualms about declaring his solidarity with Israelis terrified by Palestinian rocket fire. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

I wonder what his advice would be to a helpless father in Gaza who cannot protect his children from the American-made weaponry that killed more than 300 innocent Palestinian children. What would he say to the Palestinian grandmother ejected in 1948 by Israel and prohibited from returning to the agricultural land that could feed her stunted grandchildren?

In June, Obama stated in Cairo, “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.” But as each day goes by, Gaza slips into the hands of extremists, and the struggle for an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is being lost.

The reason is not Islam and not Hamas. The principal reason that a just solution to the conflict is fading is Israel’s ongoing resort to military force in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas respected the June 2008 truce until Israel provoked renewed rocket fire with an incursion into Gaza on Nov. 4, 2008, the day of the U.S. presidential election, killing six people. Less than two months later, Israel chose to launch its devastating war rather than negotiate a new cease-fire. This does nothing to encourage the moderates within Hamas, who are there and well worth approaching and sounding out.

Last week, Hamas met all factional leaders and asked for a complete halt to all rocket fire from the Palestinian side, so as not to give Israel a fresh excuse to start a new war. Hamas should and will recognize an Israeli state — as Aziz Dweik, the Hamas speaker of the parliament, said last week — once Israel recognizes a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israeli governments have never accepted such an outcome yet have continually demanded that brutalized Palestinians show moderation.

The fundamental reason the opportunity for peace is slipping away is because Israeli extremists in the government and military are striving to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state. They want Palestinian land, but without the Palestinians. These Palestinians are to be cordoned off in Bantustans or made so miserable they leave for other countries.

The reconciliation of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, with Fatah — which rules parts of the West Bank but is absent from Jerusalem — is crucial to reaching a negotiated settlement. While we Palestinians must do more to put our own house in order, we should be assisted by a U.S. policy that no longer pits Palestinian against Palestinian in the ancient game of divide and rule. With Palestinians divided, Israel feels no pressure to negotiate in good faith. Yet further delay only leads to more Israeli facts on the ground — the very facts that might well make a two-state outcome impossible.

Obama should resolve to govern using the same principles that won the hearts of the American people and raised a glimmer of hope in the Arab world. In the Middle East, he should step off the sidelines and into action. Israel rules by the gun and will turn itself into an apartheid state if left to its own devices. The far-right elements within Israel’s government would prefer endless war to a just peace that requires Israel to abandon its settlement project. These forces must be identified, publicly rebuked, and stopped.

It is imperative that Obama help Israel’s leaders to understand that security cannot be achieved by the gun, but only by readiness to accept me, a Palestinian, as an equal human being with equal rights.

Eyad El-Sarraj, a psychiatrist, is founder and president of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme and heads the National Reconciliation Group.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Dubai police identify murderers of Mabhouh and Mashaal vows to avenge

Mashaal vows to avenge assassination of Mabhouh

[ 30/01/2010 - 10:38 AM ]

DAMASCUS, (PIC)-- Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, on Friday vowed to take revenge for the killing of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, warning that Israel’s joy for this crime would not last long.

“If you are happy for assassinating a great man who fought you 30 years ago and killed some of your soldiers courageously and not cowardly as you did, this joy will be exceptional and momentary and the pain is coming to you, Mashaal said following the burial ceremony of the senior Hamas official in Damascus.

“You hurt us, but we hurt you and this is an open war that will not stop until you leave our land. We are confident that we will defeat you. The war is long, but we are sure about the result,” the Hamas political leader emphasized.

“This holy land rejected the crusaders, tartars and the colonists and will throw you out, and as you left Gaza, you will leave the West Bank, Haifa, Yaffa, and all Palestinian areas,” he added.

Dubai police identify murderers of Mabhouh

[ 30/01/2010 - 09:23 AM ]

DUBAI, (PIC)-- The Dubai police announced that it was able to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh and would track down the perpetrators.

According to the Emirates news agency WAM, the ongoing investigations and the coordination with Interpol will contribute to speeding the arrest and prosecution of the suspects.

WAM quoted an official security source in Dubai as saying that the initial investigations suggested that the crimes was committed by an experienced gang who tracked down the movements of the victim before he entered the UAE.

The source noted that the murderers left behind evidence at the scene of crime that would help in tracking them down quickly.

Mabhouh entered the UAE on Tuesday evening, January 19 coming from an Arab country. His body was found in the afternoon of the following day in his hotel suite in Dubai.


River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

The Blair Iraq conspiracy is unravelling

Redress Information & Analysis

---

The Chilcot Inquiry showcases the conspirators

By Christopher King

30 January 2010

Christopher King argues that Britain's Iraq Inquiry “appears now to be part of a general unravelling of the Blair conspiracy" and has underlined that UK politicians cannot be trusted. He says the lesson of Iraq lies not in whatever the inquiry might report but in the necessity for British people to take on oversight of the political process themselves.

“The Iraq war is a ‘critical incident’, that is, a catastrophic failure that indicates fundamental problems and demands appropriate change to avert future failures from the same cause. The Chilcot objective of defining theoretical ‘lessons learned’ is wholly inadequate. In the case of, for example, a bridge failure, the basics of bridge design must be revisited and extended. In the case of the Iraq war only a tribunal or court ruling that the war is or is not aggressive warfare will appropriately extend law. This is entirely consistent with the development of English common law. Paper reports are binned or archived without trace. Criminal proceedings and prison sentences are meaningful and remembered.”

We have learned very little that is new from the Chicot Inquiry but it is useful to see those involved in the Iraq war accounting for their actions. We get background and can judge their credibility as well as see the sort of person one finds in these positions. Jack Straw, former UK Foreign Secretary who presented the UK case for war to the United Nations, was completely unconvincing with his evasions and careful wording on critical points but the inquiry was never going to get anything of substance from him.

The inquiry has been at its best in the last two days in pursuing the question of the war’s legality. The entire Foreign Office legal department was unanimous in ruling that it was illegal to go to war without a specific United Nations resolution. This was communicated to the office of the attorney-general, Peter Goldsmith, who was in no doubt about their view when he declared the use of force to be legal. Sir Michael Wood, who headed the Foreign Office legal team, was at one point asked to comment and sent the Foreign Office’s contrary view to the prime minister’s office which drew the angry response: “Why did you put this in writing!”

The fact was that the prime minister didn’t want to be told anything except what he wanted to hear. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Michael Wood’s deputy, made this plain. Wilmshurst is a class act, no doubt about it -- the most impressive and credible witness so far. She resigned from the Foreign Office because, she said, she would be unable to present to others, as she would be required to do, a government policy in which she did not believe. Indeed she said that it was unprecedented for an attorney-general to ignore Foreign Office legal advice. Goldsmith did not consult the Foreign Office. He consulted the Americans and Jack Straw who wanted a war. Blair avoided asking for a firm ruling on the legality of using force without a UN resolution until American and UK forces were in the Middle East on Iraq’s borders, a few days before the invasion.

Wilmshurst’s boss, Michael Wood, was asked why he had not resigned as well. He mumbled about the department being in difficulties with a lot of resignations. Now this is interesting. Although obviously very capable, he’s a typical government careerist who will do whatever he is paid to do. This is how despotic governments get away with it. By contrast, Wilmshurst has gained enormous international credibility from her independence. The next government might do well to offer her the attorney-general’s position. It’s people of her quality and integrity that we need to restore the UK government’s international and domestic credibility.

The other person of real interest is Peter Goldsmith, the attorney-general who ruled the Iraq war legal. Goldsmith had given a provisional opinion that there was only a “reasonable” case for using force, with the safest course a UN decision -- until he consulted with the Americans, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and others in the cabinet. These people told him what the French and other countries really meant in approving Security Council Resolution 1441, although Goldsmith did not ask the French or other countries themselves. Following this enlightenment, he realized that a United Nations decision was unnecessary for acting on Resolution 1441 despite the clear wording within the resolution that the UN would decide what would be done. Anthony Blair himself could make the decision. Goldsmith duly asked for a decision from Blair and the conspiracy was on its way.

Goldsmith’s term, a “reasonable case” for using force without a further UN resolution was, as Wilmshurst said, reasonable in the sense that a reasoned argument could be made, but it was just plain wrong. Goldsmith made clear that his reasoning in favour of force was the sort of case that could be put to a court. He was clearly not thinking in terms of warfare, the devastation of a country and the lives of people. In considering a UN decision to be the “safest” course, he meant safe for himself and his client, Anthony Blair, that is, he explained, in defensibility if challenged in court. He did not mention safety for those who might suffer in a consequent war. That was the aspect of safety that Wilmshurst and the Foreign Office were concerned about. Following the invasion, Goldsmith immediately briefed defence counsel in preparation for a legal challenge as he knew he had given advice of challengeable legality.

Goldsmith believes that in forming his legal opinion he should take into account the circumstances in which UN resolutions had been taken from the time of Operation Desert Fox, Kuwait, in 1998 until current circumstances, UN discussions and resolutions. Nevertheless, he believes that although legal, whether or not it was right to use force was a political decision and none of his concern. Leaving aside any contrary legal argument, this is the flaw in his reasoning. If circumstances leading to his decision are relevant, then circumstances consequent on his decision are relevant. Indeed, consequences are always relevant to legality. We know this from our schooldays knowledge of Shylock’s proposition from The Merchant of Venice, the irony of which Goldsmith might contemplate.

Jeremy Greenstock, an enthusiastic promoter of war from the UN corridors, had a similar view that although legal, the war was not legitimate because it was not accepted domestically and by the UN. Surely he is aware that the word “legitimate” derives from “legal” and can be separated from it only by the most tortuous reasoning if at all.

Two wholly unexpected related developments have occurred. Firstly, the Netherlands government has concluded its own enquiry into the Iraq war and ruled it to be illegal. Peter Goldsmith rejected that conclusion and insisted that his own opinion was right. Moreover, it appears that Anthony Blair sent the Netherlands prime minister a letter by hand which, once read, was immediately brought back to the UK. The Netherlands has recently requested a copy but the UK government has refused the request. Among many UK citizens, I would also like to see it. I would also like to know how many other such letters the prime minister wrote, to whom and of their content.

The other development relates to the inquiry by Lord Hutton into the death of the weapons inspector David Kelly in 2003-04. We will recall that David Kelly gave information on which the BBC reported that the prime minister’s office had “sexed up” the intelligence on Iraq in its dossier that made the case for war. The BBC and Kelly were hounded unmercifully by Alstair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications, following which Kelly was found dead in woodland near his home. Hutton’s report gave the cause of death as suicide. A group of doctors disagreed. I have, myself, asked two doctors whether there was any possibility that Kelly’s injuries, reported as self-inflicted, would lead to his death. They replied, “Not a chance!” Now the dissenting doctors have discovered after five years, that Hutton sealed the post mortem report on Kelly for 70 years.

The latest information is that the doctors will be given access to the Kelly post mortem report so we shall learn more. It is not believable that Hutton’s action was to spare the feelings of the family as he claims. He and his report are completely discredited.

We may now look forward to Anthony Blair’s evidence to the Chilcot committee. One has the feeling that the Chicot committee might be going somewhere, although uncertainly. We need it to lead to a court or tribunal that will hear the case of the UK’s participation in the devastation of Iraq with uncounted millions of deaths, injuries and refugees, leading to its continued occupation by America.

It appears that the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court cannot hear a complaint relating to aggressive warfare because although named in international law, it has not been defined. I see no difficulty here. Since the named crime of aggressive warfare exists, we need a UK court or tribunal that will determine whether the Iraq war fits that crime. There was no law against murdering millions of Jews by industrial processes but it was fitted into existing law by a tribunal created at that time to examine the war within which crimes were committed and law was thereby extended.

War is simply criminality on a large scale, carried out by particular individuals using the apparatus of the state. That it is carried out by states is a fiction. It can be judged, broadly, by the same criteria as civil criminality. It is convenient to consider civil criminality and war crimes to be separate because state leaders like the right to make warfare when they choose and to enjoy immunity from their crimes. They should not have it and the people must deny them that right. No government will willingly implement such legislation. The people must force the UK government to do so.

The Iraq war is a “critical incident”, that is, a catastrophic failure that indicates fundamental problems and demands appropriate change to avert future failures from the same cause. The Chilcot objective of defining theoretical “lessons learned” is wholly inadequate. In the case of, for example, a bridge failure, the basics of bridge design must be revisited and extended. In the case of the Iraq war only a tribunal or court ruling that the war is or is not aggressive warfare will appropriately extend law. This is entirely consistent with the development of English common law. Paper reports are binned or archived without trace. Criminal proceedings and prison sentences are meaningful and remembered.

We should not confuse common law with statute law beloved of governments such as those of Blair and Brown. Statute law is the law of the monarch in modern form, that can be changed on the whim of the government of the day. Common law expresses the underlying values of our society. According to those values it is unlawful to kill and maim other humans and destroy their property. Peter Goldsmith can argue whatever fine points of law he wishes. His ruling led to death, injury, misery and damage on a vast scale. Contrary to his view of law as distinct from political decisions, in choosing (as he acknowledges) a less certain interpretation that would lead inevitably to deaths rather than a conservative UN decision that might avoid deaths, he made a political choice.

Jack Straw said that he considers international law to be an uncertain field because no court can enforce it. He sought to take advantage of that weakness and with Goldsmith sought precedents and legal grounds for war in order to achieve the objective of making war. Wilmshurst said that it was precisely because of that weakness that there was an obligation to take more care, not less in interpreting the law. But in any case, she said that at the late stage of war preparations when Goldsmith made his ruling, he was not going to stand in the way of the government. As the closest observer with the highest credibility, she should know.

What Goldsmith and Straw believe is that although prohibited by the Nuremberg Principles, because there is no definition of aggressive warfare no court can try them for it. They can get away with mass murder. That is not the position. The crime exists and is defined by the words themselves. No other definition is needed. Was their conscious objective warfare? Yes. Was their warfare aggressive? Yes. This is a valid prima facie case. We now need a tribunal to examine whether the facts fit the definition in terms of British common law, not the statute law that enables people like Anthony Blair, Jack Straw and Peter Goldsmith to sacrifice the lives of others and claim that no law against it exists.

The Chilcot inquiry has its weaknesses but it appears now to be part of a general unravelling of the Blair conspiracy that is making the nature of that conspiracy clearer. What is absolutely clear is that our politicians cannot be trusted -- neither the government nor parliament as a whole. The lesson of Iraq lies not in whatever Chilcot might report but in the necessity for the people of this country to take on oversight of the political process themselves as many are now doing. That depends on citizen action and direct intervention, not government-sponsored reports.

Forget the international courts. We should put our own house in order. Like William Joyce the traitor who collaborated with Hitler and attempted similar legal evasion, Blair, Straw and Goldsmith belong to us. We need a British Iraq tribunal to begin the cleanup of the filthy Augean Stables that is our government. We need to demand that the parties contesting the coming elections promise us one and whether they do or not, continue to demand one.

---

Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

The Burqa , in the land of Francoise Sagan

Frustrated Arab's Diary

 the French-revolution decapitated its King
to replace him by an Emperor...

In France , a parliamentarian committee is preparing a  
project for a law  that will forbid Muslim women 
to wear the Burqua or any veil that will hide their  faces.

Although , I would like to  forbid any forbidding ,
I can see the practical side of doing so.

But France has about 2 million Muslims 
where one million would be the women
out of whom only 2000 women would hide their faces 
in such an unnecessary and un-islamic way. 

Which means that 0,002% of the french-muslim- women 
may have used it , so far.......
or one lady out of each 5.000 french-muslim- women !!


I must express my admiration and my astomishement 
for the French-law-makers who bother to make a tailor-made- law  
which concerns only  0,002% of its muslim population, exclusively,
and to be more accurate, it concerns 0,0000073% of its total population.. ..
which actualy concerns one person out of each 325.000 French-citizen.


Statistically speaking ,
you may compare the effectiveness this law,  to a law regarding
-all the one-legged-french- men-whose- grand-father´ s name 
was Pierre.
or to
-all the french-women who married on a Tuesday-afternon 
whith a guy called Jacques.

Anyhow ,as a revenge ,
Muslims countries ought to forbid to their French-christian- minorities
to eat the frogg-legs with a falafel-sauce.

Eng. Moustafa Roosenbloom
staiostical researcher

PS :
I  wonder what ZORO has to say....?

he is not a french-muslem- woman
but he defends the poor and the weak !!

Posted by Тлакскала at 7:33 PM 1 comments Links to this post 

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Israel’s voice on Britain's Iraq Inquiry accuses critics of “anti-Semitism” By Nureddin Sabir

Link 

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 2:03PM Gilad Atzmon

Source: Redress Information & Analysis
Britain inquiry into the Iraq war has been dealt a severe blow by a pro-Israel activist on the inquiry committee who has given an interview to a Jewish settlers’ radio accusing his critics of “anti-Semitism”.

The Iraq Inquiry, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set up by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009 in order to “identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict”. It began its deliberations in November.

On 22 November 2009, as the inquiry, was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the inquiry’s committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that “Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism”.

Writing in the Independent newspaper a week later, Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists' links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside. Referring to Oliver Miles’s article and to an extraordinary attack on Miles by The Times, in which the paper described his comments as “disgraceful”, Ingrams said:

The ambassador's comments and the attention paid to them by The Times may be helpful in the long run, if only by drawing attention to the Israeli dimension in the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a dimension that hitherto has scarcely been mentioned. Yet it is a fact that the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein was initiated, well before 9/11, by a group of influential American neo-cons, notably Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz (once described by Time magazine as "the godfather of the Iraq war") nearly all of whom were ardent Zionists, in many cases more concerned with preserving the security of Israel than that of the US.

Given that undeniable fact, the pro-Israeli bias of Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman, both of them supporters of the 2003 invasion, is a perfectly respectable point to raise. It is equally legitimate to ask if at any point the panel will investigate or even refer to the US neo-cons and their links to Israel. Call me snide if you like, but I very much doubt they will.

On 28 January 2010, BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme reported that Martin Gilbert, whom it described as a “proud practising Jew and Zionist”, had expressed “deep unease” at the previous November’s articles by Miles Oliver and Richard Ingrams.

The radio broadcast extracts from an interview given by Gilbert to an internet radio station run by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank in which he described Oliver’s and Ingrams’s articles as “really unpleasant”. He referred to people who questioned the wisdom of including pro-Israel activists in an inquiry whose purpose was to investigate an Israeli-instigated war as “these anti-Semites”. And he said that “more leading figures” should “speak out against” what he described as the “crude anti-Israel feelings” in Britain.

Listen to  BBC correspondent Tim Franks's report on the allegations of "anti-Semitism" made by Israel's voice on the Iraq Inquiry panel, Martin Gilbert

In the interview with the settlers’ radio station, Martin Gilbert appeared to be aware of the logic behind concerns regarding the role of Israel lobbyists and agents of influence in the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq in 2003. As an eminent scholar, he should therefore understand why the British public should be worried that an active supporter of Israel on the Iraq Inquiry might not be impartial or rigorous in scrutinizing the conduct of those who launched the aggression against Iraq at the behest of pro-Israel activists like himself. Instead, he chose to divert attention with the smokescreen of “anti-Semitism”.

This subterfuge casts serious doubt about the integrity of the Iraq Inquiry. It means that if Israel lobbyists played a part in pushing Britain to join the US aggression against Iraq, this would probably be overlooked by the Israeli activists on the inquiry, who make up 40 per cent of the panel.

It also means that the Iraq Inquiry has not only been severely compromised, but was in fact doomed before it even started.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

ZAYID: Israeli Terrorism

Australians For Palestine

January 28, 2010

by Ismail Zayid - Dissident Voice – 26 January 2010

The horrendous massacre of thousands of innocent victims, on Sept. 11 Sept. in New York and Washington, brought a great deal of attention to the subject of terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaida.

There has also been some insinuation, by the media and politicians, towards Arabs and Muslims, with reference to the Middle East and the Palestine conflict.

But nowhere is there any mention of Israeli terrorism in relation to this conflict.

Terrorism is defined in a variety of ways. An interesting definition is put forward by the noted intellectual Noam Chomsky, who wrote: “There is another defining property of ‘terrorism’ in contemporary newspeak: it refers to violent acts by Them, not Us.”
Another definition is when the men, women and children who are killed are Palestinians and the gunmen or pilots who murder them are Israelis. This form of terrorism is not terrorism, we are told, but mere retaliation, self-defence or what they may call ‘civilized terrorism.’

The late professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, and then chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, wrote: “There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which, almost from its inception, has used its intelligence service (the Mossad) to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends.”

The actions of the state of Israel since its creation, and those of the terrorist gangs (the Stern, Irgun Zwei Leumi and the Haganah) that brought it about, testify to Israel’s long-established record in terrorism, not only in the Middle East but on the international scene. This record is massive and would take volumes to relate but I will refer only to a few examples:

Assassination of Palestinian leaders and intellectuals, in Europe and the Middle East has gone on for years. This includes the 1972 Lillehammer affair in Norway, where an innocent Moroccan waiter was killed in error, instead of a targeted Palestinian; the murder of the Palestinian diplomat and scholar Naim Khader in 1985 in Brussels, and many others.

Fathi Shikaki was assassinated in Malta in 1995 on the orders of Yitzhak Rabin. The role of Ehud Barak, dressed as an Arab woman, in the assassination of three Palestinian leaders, including the poet Kemal Nasser, in 1973 in Beirut, must not be forgotten.

Israeli-targeted assassination of Palestinians described as activists, as well as bystanders, continues to this day. Israeli assassination is not limited to Palestinians but includes the 1944 assassination of the British minister Lord Moyne in Cairo as planned by Yitzhak Shamir.

A horrible crime was committed in the assassination of the Swedish nobleman, Count Folke Bernadotte, a UN mediator, on Sept. 17, 1948, in Jerusalem, on the orders of Yitzhak Shamir, who later became prime minister of Israel. Count Bernadotte’s sin was his recommendation, as the UN mediator, that Palestinian refugees who were driven out from their homes by Israel should be allowed to return to their homes. This recommendation was the substance of the UN resolution 194, on Dec. 11, 1948, stipulating the right of return for the Palestinian refugees as soon as possible.

Israeli use of chemical weapons is also on record in the botched attempt to assassinate Khalid Meshal in Amman in 1997, on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Incredible as it may seem, Israel also indulged in the development of bioterrorism.

The first act of air piracy in the history of civil aviation was carried out by Israel in 1954, when a civilian Syrian airliner was forced down in Tel Aviv and its passengers and crew held hostage, despite international condemnation.

The first act of shooting down a civilian airliner was deliberately carried out by Israel when a Libyan airliner was shot down by Israeli jet fighters over Sinai in February 1973, on the orders of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, killing 107 of its passengers and its entire French crew.

Israeli terror was not restricted to Palestinians, Arabs and Europeans but included its own closest supporter and ally, the United States. In 1954, Israeli secret agents bombed the U.S. diplomatic centres in Cairo and Alexandria (known as the Lavon Affair), in an attempt to put the blame on the Egyptians. Israel later honoured the perpetrator, Marcello Ninio.

In June 1967, Israeli forces attacked and sank the U.S. spy ship USS Liberty, and strafed rescue boats, killing 35 and injuring 170 U.S. servicemen, in an attempt to conceal its own secret communications, and again tried to blame it on the Egyptians. To this day, incredible as it may seem, the U.S. Congress refuses to hold an inquiry into this crime, as requested by the surviving crew. Needless to say, no sanctions were imposed or calls to extradite the perpetrators were made.

Zionist terror did not spare Jews. In 1940, Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zwei Leumi terrorist gang bombed the ship Patria in Haifa harbor, killing 240 Jewish refugees, so as to put the blame on the British for political gain.

In 1950-1951, Israeli agents were dispatched to Iraq where they tossed hand grenades into the crowded Massauda Shem-Tov synagogue, causing numerous deaths, in order to blame it on the Iraqis and encourage reluctant Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel.

Israeli terrorism against Palestinians continues, including murder, torture, expropriation of their land, for the creation of illegal settlements and demolition of thousands of their homes as well as entire towns and villages, not to mention numerous massacres, including those of Deir Yassin, Qibya, Sabra and Shatilla, Jenin, and Gaza.

The Palestinians of the West Bank have remained under illegal occupation for over 34 years, in defiance of international law and UN Security Council resolutions. Their acts of resistance are described by Israel as terrorism, yet international law entitles all peoples, including even the Palestinian people, to resist foreign occupation.

Occupation is violence, and to bring an end to violence and bring peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians, Israel must comply with international law and withdraw completely from all territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.

Israeli acts of belligerency extend beyond its defiance of international law and Security Council resolutions to violation of its own agreements with the Palestinian Authority.

Its recent re-occupation, of seven cities and towns in the Palestinian autonomous areas is illegal. The pretext for this is the recent assassination of the Israeli Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Zeevi, by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of their leader Mustafa Zibri two months earlier.

Mr. Zibri’s assassination was one of over 50 Palestinian leaders assassinated over the last year. The invasion of these towns, including Bethlehem and Beit Jala, using tanks and Apache warships, has resulted in the demolition of scores of homes and the killing of over 50 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The invasion of these towns and cities continues in defiance of international condemnation and the call for immediate withdrawal by the U.S., Israel’s ally, benefactor and unquestioning supporter. But, alas, Israel remains above international law.

The late Canadian historian Frank Epp, then president of Grebel college of the University of Waterloo, wrote: “It is true that terrorist acts have been perpetrated by people identified as Palestinians. But there is another terrorism which is more vicious and brutal, that of dispossession and displacement forced upon the Palestinians.

However, terrorism meted out by the Palestinians, regrettable as it is, is minute by comparison with that which has been inflicted on them. The mass media have failed to make this point adequately.”

The tragedy for the Jewish people of Israel, in the crimes that are committed in their name, is highlighted in the statement made by the noted British historian Arnold Toynbee, who stated in a 1961 lecture at McGill University to a largely Jewish audience: “The Jewish treatment of the Arabs in 1948 was as morally indefensible as the slaughter by the Nazis of six million Jews … The most tragic thing in human life is when people who have suffered impose suffering in their turn.”
The Palestinian people today are calling for a modicum of justice. For without this, there will be no peace for Arab or Jew in the Middle East.

River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian

Kabul and Baghdad did not fall.

Frustrated Arab's Diary  

How can they expect any victory ?? from those.....

Recently ,
the Taliban have targeted the down-town-area of Kabul.
It is a symbolic-victory knowing that Talibans do anyhow have
the upper-hand only outside the Afghan cities...... .
So the USA and its brave allies are " back to start "
or are simply back to nowhere.
We all knew that the Western-forces cannot win politically nor morally ,
but eventually,and by some miracle, they could win militarily.
This is not the case and the Talibans are coming back to Kabul.

Now , today ,
we have the confirmation that this miracle shall not take place,
because wisdom tells us : " You cannot bomb an idea "


Elsewhere,
between the Euphrates and the Tiger , politicians are considering
allowing the members of the Baath party to re-enter
onto the political arena and to participate in the elections.

However they shall allow the "Baathist" but not the "Saddamist"
according to their spokesman.
Which resembles ,for example, to a ban on the leninists
but with a license to the communists.
Here  is a miracle in the making which is closer to absurdity
when we remember that Iraq was invaded because it was Baathist,
and for nothing else.

But, 
" you cannot bomb an ideology !! "

Kabul and Baghdad did not fall , after all.

How could the USA hope for  victory or even for a success
when Talibans and or  Baathist do come back  ??? .


The Baath-party, anyhow, is now the only salvation for Iraq,
while,  Afghanistan deserves better than the Talibans,
but who am I to judge the inevitable and the obvious ??



Raja Chemayel
 

Posted by Тлакскала at 12:20 AM 1 comments Links to this post

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Netanyahu to U.S.: I'll Free Fatah Prisoners to Boost Abbas

Almanar

29/01/2010 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to the release of hundreds of Fatah prisoners as part of efforts backed by the United States and Egypt to jump-start the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu expressed a willingness to release prisoners as a goodwill gesture in talks with the special U.S. Mideast envoy, George Mitchell. Under the plan, Israel would also embark on low-level negotiations with U.S. mediation.

Last Sunday, after meeting with Mitchell, Netanyahu told the cabinet that he heard new ideas from the American administration on the efforts to resume peace talks. "I expressed my hope that these ideas will enable the resumption of the process if the Palestinians express a similar interest in favor of all those who aspire for reconciliation in our region," the Israeli prime minister said.

A senior source in Tel Aviv said Thursday that Netanyahu's comment referred to a new proposal by Mitchell and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Negotiations would take place in the format of proximity talks, similar to the indirect negotiations that Israel held with Syria under former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Mitchell proposes that he travel between Tel Aviv and Ramallah, relaying messages to the two sides on various core issues, including borders, occupied Jerusalem, refugees and security. At a later stage the talks might be taken over by low-level officials on both sides to evaluate if negotiations can be continued at top levels.

The proposal also included Israeli goodwill gestures that would be carried out at the start of the proximity talks the United States would conduct. The main goodwill gesture is expected to be the release of hundreds of Fatah prisoners to the occupied West Bank.

The senior source in Tel Aviv said that these would largely be prisoners with only a little time left in their sentences. Other goodwill gestures involve easing travel in the West Bank.

Netanyahu accepted Mitchell's proposal, according to the Israeli source. However, Netanyahu emphasized that the Palestinians must also agree to the plan.

Mitchell presented his proposal to Abbas but the Palestinian leader has not yet said whether he agrees. "Abbas said that he will think about it and went abroad without offering an answer," the senior source in Tel Aviv said.

Mitchell is expected to return to the region in the coming weeks to receive a response from Abbas.

Abbas traveled to Cairo Friday for a meeting with Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian president is expected to pressure Abbas to respond positively to the American mediation proposal. Next week Abbas will visit Germany and Britain.

Meanwhile, Israeli Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog told Palestinian academics in Jerusalem Wednesday that the Palestinians are not correctly reading the situation in Israel regarding the current coalition. "You are not correctly reading the exceptional opportunity that exists at this time," Herzog said.

"I believe that the leaders of a center-right government will go to a historic settlement. Do not miss an opportunity again."

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian