In south Lebanon, tourism develops despite threat of war

Mona Alami, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2010

KHIAM, Lebanon (IPS) - The contours of a modern medieval castle stretch along the Wazzani River delineating Lebanon's border with Israel. A few meters away from the United Nations-mandated Blue Line, on Lebanon's first line of fire with Israel, a tourism project at an estimated cost of 20 million dollars is slowly taking shape.

Lebanon has been at war with its southern neighbor often since the creation of Israel in 1948. South Lebanon bore the brunt of the longtime enmity and fell under Israel occupancy for over 22 years from 1978-2000. Over the years, an unstable peace has reigned over the region, but broken every now and then because south Lebanon is home to Hizballah, Lebanon's local resistance movement against Israel.

The Israelis established one of their main detention and interrogation centers in the neighboring Khiam village. "The area is of strategic importance due to its proximity to the borders," General Wehbe Katish, former Lebanese general tells IPS. "The Wazzani river, which is a confluent of the Jordan river, is also another point of contention between the two countries."

A couple of investors have nevertheless decided to promote the area as a tourist destination. Khalil Abdallah and his sister Zahra are building restaurants and a hotel on their 50,000 square meter family estate, a few meters from the barbed wire fence that separates the two countries.

"It was always my father's dream to build a tourism project on our lands," says Zahra. Her brother Khalil made his fortune in the construction sector in Cote d'Ivoire.

The resort will be an eco-lodge, built around the riverbed. It would include a restaurant Les Pieds dans l'Eau (Feet in the Water), where visitors can literally dip their feet sitting by the river, as well as luxury chalets and villas, a hotel and three swimming pools.

Two structures shaped in the form of a mosque and a church have are also planned. "We have decided to include the symbols of both religions in our new project to show the region's openness; we will be building a mosque and church in a later phase," says Zahra.

In the preliminary phase, the project will include 18 chalets, rising to 60 on completion. "People in the south do not have access to large tourism projects like in other Lebanese regions, where they can hold weddings, go out for dinner or take a few relaxing days off. The south is also largely underdeveloped in terms of tourism infrastructure. Our project will certainly be meeting a growing need," says Zahra.

An additional hotel is in the plans, to include a conference centre and rotating restaurant, surrounded by 15 villas. Two pools, a playground, a tennis court and an equestrian centre are also under construction.

"The land's value alone is estimated at about 7.5 million dollars, to which will be added the cost of the project, valued at about 20 million dollars on completion. We have invested about 3.5 million dollars up until now," says Zahra.

Pointing towards the southern border, the young woman explains she is not worried about a renewed war with Israel. "The 2006 conflict showed that a new balance of power was established here in the south," she says. "This project is part of our act of defiance, and promoting development projects in the south is a peaceful way of fighting Israel."

But she does admit that having Israel's border so close to her land has raised problems. From time to time, soldiers from the Israeli army can be seen patrolling on the other side of the river.

"We have had problems with Israeli soldiers, who prohibit our workers from crossing to the other side of the river, which is also our property," says Zahra.

According to Mohamad Rida Abdallah, deputy mayor in Khiam, the project will have a positive impact on the local economy because it will employ people from nearby villages. The deputy mayor estimates unemployment levels in the area at about twenty percent. Zahra Abdallah says the Wazzani complex will employ around a hundred people in the initial phases of the launch.

Zahra and Khalil are not the only ones taking a chance by investing in the south. At Khiam, a few kilometres away from the Wazzani River, another member of the Abdallah family is building a four-star hotel.

"We can't live in fear of another war with Israel; we need to progress," says Mohamad Ali Abdallah, who is doing the three million dollar project.

In the face of such optimism, it is hard to miss the Israeli tanks in plain sight, motionless on the ground as if laying in wait. "If there is peace with Israel, the area is perfectly suited for any tourist project. But in a war, it will be a direct zone of confrontation," warns Gen. Katish.

All rights reserved, IPS -- Inter Press Service (2010). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

Palestinian armed factions vow to avenge murder of two fighters in Hebron

[ 08/10/2010 - 07:17 PM ]

From Khalid Amayreh

Occupied al-Khalil, (PIC)-- Palestinian resistance factions have vowed to avenge the murderous killing on Friday of two resistance fighters affiliated with the armed wing of Hamas, the Izzeddin al-Qassam Brigades.

Mamoun al Natshe and Nash'at al Karmi were martyred at the Jabal Johar neighborhood in Hebron before dawn Friday. The two fought valiantly a fierce long battle with hundreds of Israeli occupation soldiers, refusing to surrender. The occupation army eventually used anti-tank weapons and other heavy weapons, killing the two Hamas fighters. The building in which the two Fedayeen were barricading themselves was destroyed.

The two fighters were believed to have been responsible for a series of attacks against Israeli occupation targets, including soldiers and armed settlers.

Al-Karmi and Natshe joined Hamas in the mid 1990s and were able to elude Israeli army intelligence despite intensive efforts, often in coordination with the Palestinian Authority. Both had been jailed and tortured by Israel.

Al-Karmi was Israel 's most wanted person in the West Bank .

According to his brother, Bashar, al Karmi said the Israeli occupation authorities offered to deport his brother, the martyr Nash'at, for five years if he agreed to give up armed struggle against the Israeli occupation. However, the martyr adamantly refused.

"My brother was not of those who would surrender themselves. He wanted to become a martyr for the sake of God and for the sake of Palestine."

Al-Karmi said the martyr had been hounded by the Israeli ever since the Bani Naim operation a few weeks ago and his whereabouts were unknown ever since.

Sources in Tulkarm said preparations were underway to transfer the martyr's body to his native town in the northern West Bank .

According to Islam, a martyr is buried without the final rites that ordinary dead Muslims undergo before burial, such as a wash-up and getting wrapped in white linen shroud as it is believed they would be washed and anointed by angels.

It is uncertain whether the PA security forces will allow the two families to hold mourning receptions. The Natshe and Karmi families are among the most prominent clans in occupied Palestine. Observers suggest possible harassment by the PA could generate a lot of bitterness and indignation among members of the two clans.

Reactions:

In the Gaza Strip thousands of ordinary Palestinians, many of them Hamas supporters, took to the streets after Friday's congregational prayers, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and calling on Palestinian resistance factions to retaliate for the murderous killing.

Hamas' leaders took part in one huge rally which started at the kholafa al Rashideen Mosque in the northern part of Gaza.

Some of the speakers held the PA fully responsible for the murder to the two Islamic fighters. "The latest murder was the result of the treacherous security coordination between Israel and the Dayton's authority,' said the speaker, alluding to the American general Keith Dayton who supervises the training and arming of the PA security agencies.

Another Islamist leader, Sami Abu Zuhri, pointed out that the murderous killings in Hebron were a message to Arab leaders and officials meeting in Libya that they should abandon futile negotiations with Israel.

Hamas's parliamentary bloc has also denounced the PA, saying that the killing of Natshe and Karmi was the ultimate fruit of security coordination and cooperation between Israel and the PA.

"There is no doubt that this crime comes as a fruit of the security coordination between the Fatah authority and the Zionist regime, which is directed against the resistance."

A leaflet by the Change and Reform Block sent to the media urged the PA to immediately sever all ties with the Zionist regime.

"The PA should realize that the more it endears itself to the Zionist enemies, the more humiliation and failure it will receive. The only right and safe course of action is to return to the lap of our people."

The killing of the two Hamas fighters in Hebron Friday is expected to further complicate the stalled talks between Israel and the PA. The PA has recently stiffened its stance regarding the resumed expansion of Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank following the expiry of the ten-month moratorium. The killings, which also come at the heels of the recent burning of a Mosque north east of Hebron , might also exacerbate the sullen atmosphere between Fatah and Hamas.

A marked improvement in the relations between the two biggest Palestinian movements occurred earlier this month following a meeting in Damascus by the two group's top officials. However, the continued repression of Hamas supporters in the West Bank seems to have exacerbated the atmosphere between the two movements.

Officials from Hamas and Fatah are expected to meet in Damascus in the second half of October to attempt to finalize a possible reconciliation agreement that could end the most disastrous national rift in recent Palestinian history.

People of Tulkarem bid Karmi farewell

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Joe Sobran, Another Victim of “Anti-Semitism”

Via My Catbird Seat

- 09. Oct, 2010 in Commentary/Analysis, Israel, Media, Middle east, News/Politics, USA, War -

ED Note: Today, Shamir laments the passing of yet another Journalist victim of the Zionist system, Joe Sobran.  Joe was a Whiz Kid Writer, Editor and ultimately Senior  Editor of W. F. Buckley’s National Review, and a close personal friend of Buckley himself.  He wrote about Zionism and “Jews” and neither his stature on the National Review nor his friendship with Buckley could protect him.

“For Fear of the Jews”

Joeseph Sobran dies at 64

By Israel Shamir

(Expanded from SOBRAN’S, September 2002, pages 3–6, and taken from a speech given at the IHR Conference held in Los Angeles, June 21–23, 2002.)

The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as … well, news.  It was mentioned in the Jewish newspaper Forward and on the Zionist Wall Street Journal Online.  The editors of two conservative magazines called and wrote me to express their concern that I might damage my reputation, such as it is, by speaking to “Holocaust deniers.”
I’m not sure why this should matter.  Even positing that I was speaking to a disreputable audience, I expect to be judged by what I say, not whom I say it to.  I note that my enemies have written a great deal about me, yet they rarely quote me directly.

Why not?  If I am so disreputable myself, I must at least occasionally say disreputable things.  Is it possible that what I say is more cogent than they like to admit?

My enemies are always welcome to quote anything I say, if they dare.  I would say the same things to them, and they may consider my remarks to the IHR as addressed to them too.  I wasn’t just speaking to “Holocaust deniers,” but also to Holocaust believers.

Because I’ve endured smears and ostracism for my criticism of Israel and its American lobby, some people credit me with courage.  I’m flattered, of course, but this compliment, whether or not I deserve it, implies that it’s professionally dangerous for a journalist to criticize Israel.  That tells you a lot.

But if I’m “courageous,” what do you call Mark Weber and the Institute for Historical Review?  They have been smeared far worse than I have; moreover, they have been seriously threatened with death.  Their offices have been firebombed.  Do they at least get credit for courage?  Not at all.  They remain almost universally vilified.

When I met Mark, many years ago, I expected to meet a raving Jew-hating fanatic, such being the generic reputation of “Holocaust deniers.”  I was immediately and subsequently impressed to find that he was just the opposite: a mild-mannered, good-humored, witty, scholarly man who habitually spoke with restraint and measure, even about enemies who would love to see him dead.  The same is true of other members of the Institute.  In my many years of acquaintance with them, I have never heard any of them say anything that would strike an unprejudiced listener as unreasonable or bigoted.

It was his enemies who were raving, hate-filled fanatics, unable to discuss “Holocaust deniers” in measured language, without wild hyperbole, loose accusation, and outright lies.  I began to wonder: if they can’t tell the truth about “Holocaust deniers,” how can they tell the truth about the Holocaust itself?

Even if the Holocaust had really happened, as I assumed, maybe it should be studied with a critical rationality most of its believers obviously lacked.  After all, even Stalin’s crimes might be exaggerated, quite understandably, by his victims.  As Milton puts it, “Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” Even those in error might have something to say, some marginal clarification to offer.  Why stop our ears against them?

Why on earth is it “anti-Jewish” to conclude from the evidence that the standard numbers of Jews murdered are inaccurate, or that the Hitler regime, bad as it was in many ways, was not, in fact, intent on racial extermination? Surely these are controversial conclusions; but if so, let the controversy rage.  There is no danger in permitting it to proceed.  It might be different if denying the Holocaust could somehow affect the course of events, as the denial of Stalin’s crimes by the New York Times in the 1930s helped him to continue committing them.  Why is the Institute for Historical Review notorious, while the Times, despite its active support of Stalin at the height of his power, remains a pillar of respectability?

The Holocaust has never been a consuming interest of mine.  But as I read the Journal of Historical Review over the years, I found in it the same calm virtue of critical rationality I’d found in Mark himself.  And it was applied to many other subjects besides the question of whether Hitler had tried to exterminate the Jews.

I’m especially indebted to one fascinating article on another taboo subject: Abraham Lincoln’s long pursuit of the policy of sending former Negro slaves outside the United States.  This completely reshaped the book on Lincoln I was writing.  I realized that you can’t understand Lincoln unless you grasp that he waged the Civil War with a dual goal: to prevent the political separation of North and South, while achieving the racial separation of whites and blacks.  His dream was a united white America.  He was by no means the color-blind humanitarian we have been taught to revere.

The IHR’s mission can’t be fairly summed up as “Holocaust denial.” Its real mission is criticism of the suffocating progressive ideology that has infected and distorted the telling of history in our time.  But of course its specific skepticism of the standard Holocaust story is regarded as blasphemy, and has earned it the dreaded epithet of anti- Semitism.
Not long ago the only label more lethal to one’s reputation was that of child molester, but, as many men of the cloth are now discovering, there is this difference: a child molester may hope for a second chance.

There is also another difference.  We have a pretty clear idea what child molestation is.  Nobody really knows what “anti-Semitism” is.  My old boss Bill Buckley wrote an entire book called In Search of Anti- Semitism without bothering to define anti- Semitism.

At the time I thought this was an oversight.  I was wrong.  The word would lose its utility if it were defined.  As I observed in my own small contribution to the book, an anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews.  Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.

I doubt, in fact I can’t imagine, that anyone associated with the IHR has ever done harm to another human being because he was Jewish.  In fact the IHR has never been accused of anything but thought-crimes.

The same is true of me.  Nobody has ever accused me of the slightest personal indecency to a Jew.  My chief offense, it appears, has been to insist that the state of Israel has been a costly and treacherous “ally” to the United States.  As of last September 11, I should think that is undeniable.  But I have yet to receive a single apology for having been correct.

If I were to hate Jews en masse, without distinction, I would be guilty of many things.  Obviously I’d be guilty of injustice and uncharity to Jews as human beings.  I would also be guilty of willful stupidity.  More personally, I’d be guilty of ingratitude to my benefactors — which Dante, in his Inferno, ranks the worst of all sins — since many of my benefactors, in large ways and small, have been Jewish

Moreover, I would be becoming exactly the man my Zionist enemies would like me to be; a man like them, in whom ethnic hostilities take priority over all other values and considerations.  I would justify them in treating me as an enemy.  In fact I’d go so far as to say that I would be helping to justify the state of Israel.  I consider that if I fight these people on their terms, they have already won.

What, exactly, is “anti-Semitism”? One standard dictionary definition is “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group.” How this applies to me has never been explained.  My “hostility” toward Israel is a desire not for war, but for neutrality — out of a sense of betrayal, waste, and shame.  Our venal politicians have aligned us with a foreign country that behaves dishonorably.  Most alleged “anti-Semites” would wince if Jews anywhere were treated as Israel treats its Arab subjects.  Moreover, Israel has repeatedly betrayed its only benefactor, the United States.  I have already alluded to the place Dante reserves for those who betray their benefactors.

These are obvious moral facts.  Yet it’s not only politicians who are afraid to point them out; so are most journalists — the people who are supposed to be independent enough to say the things politicians can’t afford to say.  In my thirty years in journalism, nothing has amazed me more than the prevalent fear in the profession of offending Jews, especially Zionist Jews.

The fear of the label anti-Semitic is a fear of the power that is believed to lie behind it: Jewish power.  Yet this is still pretty much unmentionable in journalism.  It’s rather as if sportswriters covering pro basketball were prohibited from mentioning that the Los Angeles Lakers were in first place.

In my 21 years at National Review, I had a front-row seat.  I watched closely as Bill Buckley changed from a jaunty critic of Israel to what I can only call a servile appeaser.  In its early days, the magazine published robust editorials blasting politicians who sacrificed American to Israeli interests in order to pander to the Jewish vote; in those days it was considered risqué to suggest that there was a “Jewish vote.” Today Bill’s magazine supports Israel with embarrassing sycophancy, never daring to intimate that Israeli and American interests may occasionally diverge.  It has forgotten its own principles; today it would never dare to publish the editorials written by its great geopolitical thinker of those early days, James Burnham.

There has been a qualitative change that is downright eerie — not only in Bill Buckley and National Review, but in American conservatism generally.  The “fear of the Jews,” to use the phrase so often repeated in the Gospel according to John, seems to have wrought a reorientation of the tone, the very principles, of today’s conservatism.  The hardy skepticism, critical intelligence, and healthy irony of men like James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and the young Buckley have given way to the uncritical philo-Semitism of George Will, Cal Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and of course the later Buckley — men who will go to any lengths, even absurd and dishonorable lengths, to avoid the terrorizing label anti-Semite.

It was once considered “anti-Semitic” to impute “dual loyalty” to Jews — that is, to assert that most American Jews divide their loyalty between the United States and Israel.  This is now passé.  Today most politicians assume, as a matter of course, that Israel commands the primary loyalty of Jewish voters.  Are they accused of “anti-Semitism” for doing so? Does this assumption cost them Jewish votes? Not at all! Dual loyalty nothing! Dual loyalty would be an improvement!

Once again, it’s a practical necessity to know what it would be professional suicide to say.  No politician in his right mind would accuse Jews of giving their primary loyalty to Israel; but most politicians act as if this were the case.  And they succeed.

You can read Jewish publications like Commentary for years, and you’ll read interminable discussions about what’s good for Israel, but you’ll never encounter the slightest suggestion that what’s good for Israel might not be good for America.  The possibility simply never comes up.  The only discernible duty of Jews, it seems, is to look out for Israel.  They never have to choose between Israel and the United States.  So much for the “canard” of dual loyalty.

The very word anti-Semite is reminiscent of the term anti-Soviet.  It serves a similar function of facilitating imputations of ill-defined guilt.

The strength of Western law has always been its insistence on definition.  When we want to minimize an offense, say murder or burglary, we define it as clearly as possible.  We want judge and jury to know exactly what the charge means, not only to convict the guilty but, also, just as important, to protect the innocent.

Clear definitions put a burden of proof on the accuser, and properly so.  If you falsely accuse a man of murder or burglary, not only is he apt to be acquitted — you may pay a heavy penalty yourself.  As a result, few of us are afraid of being charged with murders and burglaries we didn’t commit.

By contrast, the Soviet legal system left prosecutors with a wide discretion in identifying “anti-Soviet” activities.  Almost anything irritating to the Soviet state could qualify.  An impossible burden of proof lay on the accused; guilt was presumed; acquittals were virtually nonexistent.  To be indicted was already to be convicted.  Since the charge was undefined, it was unfalsifiable; there was no such thing as a false accusation.  As a result, the Russian population lived in fear.
The word anti-Semitic functions like the word anti-Soviet.  Being undefined, it’s unfalsifiable.  Loose charges of “anti-Semitism” are common, but nobody suffers any penalty for making them, since what is unfalsifiable can never be shown to be false.  I once read an article in a Jewish magazine that called the first Star Wars movie “anti- Semitic.” I was amazed, but I couldn’t prove the contrary.  Who could? And of course people in public life — and often in private life — fear incurring the label, however guiltless they may be.

If you want to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, you define crimes precisely.  If, however, you merely want to maximize the number of convictions, increase the power of the accusers, and create an atmosphere of dread, you define crimes as loosely as possible.  We now have an incentive system that might have been designed to promote loose charges of “anti-Semitism.”

Silly as all this is from a rational point of view, the label of anti-Semitism is deeply feared.  It does signify one thing: Jewish hatred.  When I became a conservative as a college freshman, in 1965, nearly all Jews were liberals and Jewish intellectuals associated conservatism with “anti-Semitism.” Bill Buckley was often depicted as a fascist or crypto-Nazi; given the smears he endured, it’s understandable that he should go to great lengths to appear pro-Jewish, even if he somewhat overdid it by abetting smears of his fellow conservatives.

The situation changed somewhat when many Jewish intellectuals, upset by liberal criticism of Israel, became what were called “neoconservatives.” This term implied no deep adherence to conservative principles, but only the adoption of a few ad hoc principles useful to Zionism, with no basic departure from New Deal liberalism insofar as it was useful to Zionism. 

“Neoconservatism” was really a sort of “kosher” conservatism.

A few incidents from my years at National Review may illustrate the point.

In the mid 1980s, the neoconservative Earth Mother Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz, accused Russell Kirk of “anti-Semitism.” Kirk’s offense? He had made a mild quip that some neoconservatives appeared to believe that the capital of Western civilization was Tel Aviv.  Never mind that he had a point.  Kirk had been a founding father of modern conservatism and a National Review columnist for many years, yet the magazine not only failed to rally to his defense against this smear — it didn’t even report the incident! Decter’s attack was the biggest news of the season in the conservative movement, but Buckley was afraid to mention it.  So was most of the conservative press.

At about the same time, Israeli troops shot up a Catholic Church on the West Bank during Mass — a horrible sacrilege that sent worshipers fleeing for their lives and provoked an angry protest from the Vatican.  (The congregation had planned a march after Mass to protest the beating of a Palestinian priest by Israeli soldiers.) I mentioned the incident to Buckley, a fellow Catholic, at an editorial meeting and gave him a news clipping describing the event in detail; as I expected, the magazine ignored this too.  Even the violent persecution of Catholics by Jews was unmentionable — in a “conservative” magazine owned and run by a Catholic.

When the Pollard spy case broke, the magazine called for the death penalty for Pollard — but excused Israel for sponsoring him, on grounds that it’s normal for friendly nations to spy on each other!

And so it went.  I could have understood a favorable attitude toward Israel, having been pro-Israel for many years myself; but surely even this alliance must have occasional drawbacks.  From time to time it’s necessary to criticize even friends.  If we criticized our own government every week, why not Israel once in a while? But the magazine consistently refused to find the slightest fault with Israel, and since I left in 1993 it has gotten much worse.  Today it has become assertively slavish, to a comical degree.

By 1993 I’d had enough.  I wrote a column correcting some of the things Bill had written about me, in which I mentioned his evident fear; I wrote that he was “jumpy about Jews.” This was a pretty mild description of his terror, but the column got me fired, just as I expected.  Since then it has become a neoconservative legend that I was fired for “anti-Semitism,” but the truth is that it was far more personal than that.  Bill knew me too well to make such a charge.  I was fired for making him look bad.  He considered making others look bad his prerogative.

Since then I’ve noticed how eager and desperate mainstream conservatives are to avoid Jewish wrath.  Again, they don’t just speak favorably of Israel; they refuse to acknowledge any cost to American interests in the U.S.-Israel alliance.  They treat the two countries’ interests as identical; when they scold either government, it’s always — always — the U.S.  Government for failing to support our “reliable ally.” They are in headlong flight from reality.  They have none of the realism of James Burnham, whose writings and style of thought would be wholly unwelcome in today’s conservative movement.

They are frightened.  You can sense this in their bluster, in the vicarious jingoism with which they address Israel.  Their fear produces a peculiar intellectual thinness that pervades all their thinking on foreign policy.  Gone is the critical intelligence that used to set the tone for such earlier conservative writers as Burnham, Kendall, Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, Thomas Molnar, and the other distinguished names that used to grace the masthead of National Review.  Individualists have been replaced by apparatchiks.  Zionism has infiltrated conservatism in much the same way Communism once infiltrated liberalism.

I notice that Bill Buckley’s latest book is a novel about the Nuremberg trials.  Over the past few years Bill has made a habit of commemorating the Holocaust with remarkable frequency.  He has dropped references to Auschwitz into countless of his syndicated columns and interviews, as if compelled to banish the slightest suspicion that he has any doubts about the Holocaust or that he doesn’t feel deeply about it.  The Holocaust seems to have joined, or supplanted, the Gulag Archipelago in his historical memory.

Since I vividly remember the days when Bill regarded the Jews and Israel not with hostility, but with a healthy and playful irony — the same attitude he brought to politics in general — I find all this solemnity pretty cloying.

Here I should lay my own cards on the table.  I am not, heaven forbid, a “Holocaust denier.” I lack the scholarly competence to be one.  I don’t read German, so I can’t assess the documentary evidence; I don’t know chemistry, so I can’t discuss Zyklon-B; I don’t understand the logistics of exterminating millions of people in small spaces.  Besides, “Holocaust denial” is illegal in many countries I may want to visit someday.  For me, that’s proof enough.  One Israeli writer has expressed his amazement at the idea of criminalizing opinions about historical fact, and I find it puzzling too; but the state has spoken.

Of course those who affirm the Holocaust need know nothing about the German language, chemistry, and other pertinent subjects; they need only repeat what they have been told by the authorities.  In every controversy, most people care much less for what the truth is than for which side it’s safer and more respectable to take.  They shy away from taking a position that is likely to get them into trouble.  Just as only people on the Axis side were accused of war crimes after World War II, only people critical of Jewish interests are accused of thought-crimes in today’s mainstream press.

So, life being as short as it is, I shy away from this controversy.  Of course I’m also incompetent to judge whether the Holocaust did happen; so I’ve become what might be called a “Holocaust stipulator.” Like a lawyer who doesn’t want to get bogged down debating a secondary point, I stipulate that the standard account of the Holocaust is true.  What is undisputed — the massive violation of human rights in Hitler’s Germany — is bad enough.

What interests me is the growth of what Norman Finkelstein has called “the Holocaust Industry.” True or not, the Holocaust story has been put to many uses, some of them mischievous.  It is currently being used to extort reparations and to blacken reputations, for example.  Daniel Goldhagen is soon to publish a book blaming the Holocaust on the central teachings of the Catholic Church.  This is only the most ambitious project of a school of thought, largely but not exclusively Jewish, that sees Christianity as the source of all “anti-Semitism.”
So if you want to avoid being called “anti-Semitic,” the safest course is to renounce Christianity.  Whether this is a safe course for your immortal soul is a question Goldhagen doesn’t address.  The important thing is to avoid Jewish censure.  Obviously this sort of thinking presupposes Christian fear of the Jews.  Jews themselves are not unaware of Jewish power; some of them have rather exaggerated confidence in it.

But the chief use of the Holocaust story is to undergird the legitimacy of the state of Israel.  According to this view, the Holocaust proves that Jewish existence is always in danger, unless the Jews have their own state in their own homeland.  The Holocaust stands as the historical objectification of all the world’s gentiles’ eternal “anti-Semitism.” Jewish life is an endless emergency, requiring endless emergency measures and justifying everything does in the name of “defense.” Jews and Israel can’t be judged by normal standards, at least until Israel is absolutely safe — if even then.  Their circumstances are forever abnormal.

But the daily news reports suggest that Israel may not really be the safest place for Jews.  Theodore Herzl’s original dream was of a Jewish state where Jews could at last live the normal lives they were denied in the Diaspora.  Yet today it’s Diaspora Jews who live relatively normal lives, at least in the West, while they must worry about the very survival of Israel.  And far from being the independent state Herzl hoped for, Israel depends heavily on the support not only of Diaspora Jews but of foreign gentiles, especially Americans.

Israel insists that its “right to exist” is nothing more than the right of every nation on earth to be left in peace.  This right is allegedly threatened by fanatical Arabs who want to “drive the Jews into the sea,” as witness the recent wave of Palestinian terror.  But in truth, Israel’s claimed “right to exist” is much more than it seems at first sight.  It means a right to rule as Jews, enjoying rights denied to native Palestinians.

We are told incessantly that Israel is a “democracy,” and therefore the natural ally of the United States, whose “democratic values” it shares.  This is a very dubious claim.  To Americans, democracy means majority rule, but with equal rights for minorities.  In Israel and the occupied territories, equal rights for the minority are simply out of the question.

Majority rule itself has taken a peculiar form in Israel.  The original Arab majority was driven out of their homes and their native land, and kept out.  Meanwhile, a Jewish “majority” was artificially imported.  Not only the first immigrants from Eastern Europe, but every Jew on earth was granted a “right of return” — that is, “return” to a “homeland” most have never lived in, and in which none of their ancestors has ever lived.  A Jew from Brooklyn (whose grandfather came from Poland) can fly to Israel and immediately claim rights denied to an Arab whose people have always lived in Palestine.  In recent years Israel has been augmenting its Jewish majority by vigorously encouraging Jewish immigration, especially from Russia.  Ariel Sharon has told a group of American senators that Israel needs a million more Jewish immigrants.

In recent negotiations, Israel has flatly rejected demands for a “right of return” for Palestinians exiled since 1948.  It frankly gave as its reason that this would mean “the end of the Jewish state,” since an Arab majority would surely vote down Jewish ethnic privileges.  If Israel remained democratic, it wouldn’t long remain Jewish.

This confirms the contention of hard-line Revisionist Zionists from Vladimir Jabotinsky to Meir Kahane that in the long run, Israel must be either Jewish or democratic; it can’t be both.  And in order to remain Jewish, it must reject the equal rights for its minorities that Jews everywhere demand where they are a minority.  Israel must be the only “democracy” whose existence depends on inequality.

Put otherwise, Zionism is a denial of the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence.  To acknowledge those truths, and to put them into practice, would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.  Again, honest and rigorous Zionists have always seen and said this.
American gentiles, bemused by the propaganda claim that a beleaguered little democracy is fighting for its very right to exist, are vaguely baffled, unable to comprehend what is before their eyes.  They still haven’t figured out that Israeli “democracy” is essentially and radically different from — even repugnant to — what they understand as democracy.

With the verbal sleight-of-hand at which they are masters, the Israelis always appeal to the Holocaust.  Maybe they have nuclear weapons, but their existence is threatened — once more! — by rock-throwing Arab boys.  The Arabs are the new Nazis, repeating and perpetuating the eternal peril of the Jews.  Israel is determined to prevent another Holocaust and must crush the Arab threat by any means necessary, including harsh measures.

Israel without the Holocaust is hard to imagine.  But let’s try to imagine it.

Suppose the Holocaust had never occurred, had never been alleged, had never been called “the Holocaust.” Imagine that no great persecution had provided the Jewish state with a special excuse for oppressive emergency measures.  In other words, imagine that Israel were forced to justify itself like any other state.

In that case, Israel’s treatment of its Arab minorities would appear to the world in a very different light.  Its denial of equal or even basic rights to those minorities would lack the excuse of a past or prospective “Holocaust.” Civilized people would expect it to treat those it ruled with impartial justice — like civilized states.  Special privileges for Jews would appear as outrageous discrimination, no different from insulting legal discrimination against Jews.  The sense — and excuse — of perpetual crisis would be absent.  Israel might be forced or pressured, possibly against its will, to be “normal.” If it chose to be democratic, its Jews would have to take their chance of being outnumbered, just like majorities in other democracies.  Nobody would suppose that losing elections would mean their annihilation.

In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations.  It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress.  This is all quite irrational, because even if six million Jews were murdered during World War II, it doesn’t follow that the survivors are entitled to commit the slightest injustice.  If your father was stabbed in the street, that’s a pity, but it’s not an excuse for picking someone else’s pocket.

In a peculiar way, the Holocaust story has promoted not only pity, but actual fear of the Jews.  It has removed them from the universe of normal moral discourse.  It has made them victims with nukes.  It has made them even more dangerous than their enemies have always charged.  It has given the world an Israel ruled by Ariel Sharon.

Benjamin Netanyahu has written that Israel is “an integral part of the West.” I think it would be truer to say that Israel has become a deformed limb of the West.
——————————————————————————————

From Bradley Callum
Joe Sobran died September 30th.  I’ve read that you’ve communicated with him in the past.  I thought you might like to post these remembrances of Sobran for your Yahoo Group members.  Joe Sobran was a great writer, and he was my favorite modern-day critic of the Jews.

Scott Richert:  http://catholicism.about.com/b/2010/10/04/joseph-sobran-r-i-p.htm
Paul Gottfried: http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-inspiration-of-joe-sobran/
Kevin Macdonald: http://theoccidentalobserver.net/tooblog/?p=3493
This is his website: www.sobran.com
Best,
Paul Gottfried:  http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-inspiration-of-joe-sobran/

The death of Joe Sobran on September 30, after several years of failing health, could not have come as a total surprise to any of his friends.  News about his deteriorating condition and the need for divine intervention was steadily provided by Fran Griffin, his alter ego of many years, his longtime publisher, and, not least of all, his tireless fundraiser.  From Fran’s reports throughout September, it was clear that Joe would not survive much longer.  The news that he expired painlessly may have been the least disturbing communication from her during this period.

Joe’s death deprives those of us on the independent right and in Anglophone society of a brilliant literary presence.  Although widely known as a political controversialist, Joe was also, not incidentally, one of the most impressive English stylists of his and my generation.  Most of his columns, like his works on Shakespeare’s real identity and on complicated constitutional questions, were literary gems.  And though he would not have presumed to compare his talent to that of his hero G.K. Chesterton, Joe was probably Chesterton’s equal as a master of expository prose.  The reason this graduate of Eastern Michigan (and scion of a working-class Ukrainian family) rose rapidly at National Review to become a senior editor within three years, after being hired in 1972, is that William F. Buckley recognized his considerable talent.

And arguably Joe was kept at the magazine even after Norman Podhoretz and his soul-mates condemned him as an anti-Semite in 1993, because Buckley wished to hold on to his best writer.  Perhaps trying to bring around his newly acquired neoconservative dinner companions, Buckley defended Joe (and Pat Buchanan) for a time as “contextual” rather than genuine anti-Semites.  According to Buckley, it was because of general sensitivity to the historic problem of anti-Semitism and the special place of Israel among American Christians as well as American Jews that the frontal attack on AIPAC and Jewish media power engaged in by Joe aroused such resoundingly negative feelings.

Joe retorted that if his targets were as weak and vulnerable as they claimed, then he would not have had to fear for his job and his future.

In the end he was driven off the pages of National Review, after violating a rule established for him specifically, that he would never again be allowed to write on Jewish subjects.  I doubt Joe broke that rule out of disrespect for Buckley, whom he viewed as a second father.  Meeting both of them at a conference at Hillsdale in the mid-1970s, I was struck by Joe’s deferential behavior toward his mentor.  Even after he lost his post at NR and Buckley had become for the entire world to see the servile instrument of neoconservative power, Joe went on speaking of him with profound respect.  In 2008, after Buckley had died, Joe, who by then was badly ailing, expressed relief that he had been able “to patch things up” with the man whom he had esteemed for so many decades.

If he had violated Buckley’s house rule by returning to forbidden subjects, he had done so because he would not allow himself to be intimidated.  And though I often disagreed with Joe’s positions, or found them to be overstated, there were two things I would never question.  One, the author in question was a person of unimpeachable integrity; and two; he would never have expressed an opinion simply in order to advance his career.  By contrast, his enemies had no such virtues, and it was not surprising that Joe’s adversary had made a reputation for himself by writing memoirs appropriately titled Making It.  Joe’s enemies stood for the Kingdom of Arrogance, although given how well they have done, one would have to reconsider the truth of the biblical teaching that “Pride goes before the fall.”  This certainly has not been the case for those who ruined Joe’s career.

It now seems to me that Joe’s enemies won, at most, a Pyrrhic victory.  They had derailed the careers of others, including Sam Francis and myself.  They had also smeared Buchanan in their publications and then pummeled him with nasty accusations of anti-Semitism and homophobia during his presidential run in 1992.  But Buchanan landed on his feet, and so did I, to the extent that I could fall back on some kind of academic position.  Sam too survived after a fashion, even after the neoconservatives, led by immigration expansionist Linda Chavez, got him fired at the Washington Times. Indeed, even that first victim of what Murray Rothbard called “the neoconservative Smearbund,” Southern conservative literary scholar M.E. Bradford, had a professional life after the neocons kept him from becoming Director of the NEH.  Mel could and did return to a full professorship at the University of Dallas.

But Joe fell more catastrophically than the other neocon victims, from celebrity to almost total marginalization.  In spite of all, he did continue to put out newsletters and even occasionally got invited to give talks, in return for modest compensation.  Among those who helped Joe through these difficult times were Fran Griffin, Lew Rockwell, the traditionalist Catholic magazine The Wanderer, and a few other publications that paid him for his writing.  It was often distressing to read Joe’s essays online or in his printed newsletter, knowing that this magnificent writer was going largely unread in his lifetime, while imbeciles and intellectual pygmies were being featured in prestigious and heavily funded neoconservative and liberal publications.  Such disproportion between earthly accomplishments and earthly reward is enough to make one believe that all justice lies in the afterlife.

All the same, Joe’s fate did not have the consequence that the neoconservatives intended.  Rather than serving as a warning of what might befall those who practice rightwing deviationism or take unauthorized positions, Joe’s outrageous reduction to a pariah generated resistance to the bullies who had gone after him.  The steepness of his fall and the pious forbearance with which he treated his enemies had the effect of pouring steel into the spine of the independent Right.  Machiavelli taught that it is better to be feared than to be loved but the worst thing is to be despised.  Those who persecuted Joe and those who were the beneficiaries of this persecution became loathed by those whom this example of vengeance was supposed to render fearful.

It is also telling that for the younger generation on the independent Right, Joe is a hero, in a way that most paleoconservatives are not.  The young admire him for having fought back, not only against the American global democratic empire but against the neoconservative commissars of the present conservative movement.  Joe didn’t change the subject when he smelled danger and he didn’t care how many members of the New York nomenklatura he offended by speaking his mind.  He suffered grievously for his honesty, while others were making careers by truckling.  Whatever his faults, they pale beside his luminous virtues.  Requiescat in pace Dei!

Source: http://www.israelshamir.net/index.htm

Israel Shamir: A leading Russian Israeli writer, is a champion of the “One Man, One Vote, One State” solution seeking to unite Palestine & Israel in one democratic state. Shamir’s work and that of his contributors speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians seeking an end to the bloodshed, true democracy and lasting peace. His comments about current affairs and their deeper meaning are published on his site www.israelshamir.net.

More from Israel Shamir:

• ISRAEL SHAMIR: FEAR NOT

• ISRAEL SHAMIR: ISRAELI RECIPE FOR DEALING WITH THE WORLD: “IF FORCE DOES NOT WORK, USE MORE FORCE”

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Washington Expresses Regret Over Iran-Egypt Deal

08/10/2010 Washington has expressed regret over Egypt's recent decision to renew direct flights between Cairo and Tehran, after more than 30 years.

The two nations have reportedly agreed to see 28 weekly flights between them – 14 in each direction.

"We continue to urge all countries – including Egypt – not to pursue any new business deals until Iran complies with its international obligations," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"Given the current atmosphere... we're trying to discourage this kind of engagement with Iran, until it owns up to its international obligations," he stressed.

Hamid Baghaei, an Iranian vice president and the head of culture and tourism, told Tehran State Television that the agreement was "one of the most valuable economic agreements that have been signed between Iran and Egypt over the past 30 years," adding that it could be a first step toward issuing visas to Egyptian and Iranian citizens and otherwise furthering ties between the two usually states.

Egypt originally cut ties with Iran shortly after the Iranian Revolution of 1978.

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Book review: "A Wall in Palestine"

Alex Kane, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2010
The conflict in Palestine has become so all-consuming that even objects are central to the struggle. French journalist René Backmann's A Wall in Palestine illustrates this fact. The book reveals how the inanimate object that is Israel's wall in the occupied West Bank has become so imbued with conflicting meanings and ideas that it can be seen as an actor that creates new actions in their wake, like the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) that takes aim at Israeli colonization. The campaign for divestment from Elbit Systems, a company that provides "intrusion detection systems," is one such example.

A Wall in Palestine looks at the planned 490-mile-long, 25-foot-high wall, complete with fencing, trenches, thermal imaging and sniper towers, that Israel is building in parts of the West Bank. While Backmann's work is a useful contribution to understanding Israel's wall, the author all too easily adopts the language of the Israeli occupation and spends little time on crucial context and history relating to the conflict.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in an advisory opinion, ruled the route of the wall was illegal under international law. The vast majority of it snakes through occupied Palestinian territory, slicing up Palestinian villages and cutting off access to urban areas.

The idea of constructing a barrier to separate the Palestinian population from the Israeli population has deep roots within Zionist ideology and has been proposed by Israeli officials for decades. As Backmann explains, the idea of building a wall can be traced, at least in a metaphorical sense, to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological father of Revisionist Zionism, the right-wing strain of Zionism that advocated for a Jewish majority in all of what was Mandate Palestine. Jabotinsky famously wrote in 1923 that "[Jewish] emigration to Palestine must continue ... in a way that our settling can develop there under the protection of a power that is not dependent on the local population, under the shelter of a wall of iron that this population can never break down. This must be our political stance regarding the Arab question" (p. 27-28).

But it wasn't until the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, and the rise to power of former Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, that the idea of a wall began to be seriously considered. Ironically, Sharon's right-wing Likud Party, which has its roots in Revisionist Zionism, was wary of the idea. Likud-party stalwarts feared that a barrier built on the 1949 armistice line demarcating Israel's unofficial border with the occupied West Bank might create the boundaries for a future Palestinian state and leave Israel's colonization project in jeopardy, something that right-wing Zionists had no interest in.

Following its 2002 invasion of major West Bank cities dubbed "Operation Defensive Shield," the Israeli government under Sharon decided to begin building the wall. Although security for Israeli civilians was the stated justification, the route of the wall made clear that it was primarily an annexation project. As the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem explains, "a major aim in setting the route was de facto annexation of land: when the Barrier is completed, some nine percent of the West Bank, containing sixty settlements, will be situated on the western -- the 'Israeli' -- side" ("The Separation Barrier"). Other benefits of the route of the barrier from the Israeli perspective include, as Backmann notes, the taking of fertile land and precluding the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Backmann is at his best when talking to Israeli officials instrumental in the implementation of the wall and to the Palestinians who have had to bear the brunt of its construction. Heartbreaking stories abound in A Wall in Palestine as Palestinians' human rights are thrown to the wayside by Israel's barrier. One example Backmann reports on is a 2004 incident in the village of Ras Atiya, where a two-year-old Palestinian with a high fever died after having to take an hour-long detour due to a barrier gate being closed (p. 89).

Problematically, when describing the Sharon government's siege of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2001, Backmann refers to civilian casualties as "collateral damage" (p. 37). On a number of occasions, he refers to the West Bank uncritically and without quotes as Judea-Samaria, which is the biblical term used by Israeli settlers and their right-wing supporters (p. 29, p. 41, p. 156, p. 173). Backmann fails to adequately discuss the 1948 Palestine War that led to the creation of Israel, including the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in what is called the Nakba, or catastrophe. An exploration of the colonial nature of Zionism would help explain why Israel sees no problem with building a wall that tramples on the human rights of Palestinians. Moreover, the use of the Israeli occupation's language when talking about the West Bank confers legitimacy on Israeli policies of land confiscation, ethnic cleansing and the wanton killing of innocents.

Also missing is an in-depth discussion of the rise of popular resistance movements across the West Bank, which developed in response to the building of the barrier. Places like the village of Bilin, which hosts a protest against the barrier every Friday, have become international symbols of Palestinian resistance. Yet Backmann does not explore the protests against the wall and what they mean in a larger context.

Backmann's book represents a unique way of exploring the conflict in looking at it solely through the prism of the separation barrier. But the significant shortcomings in the book hinder what could have been an important and defining piece of work on the wall. Readers who want a sharp and critical look at the wall that places it in its proper historical and ideological context will not have their desire met with A Wall in Palestine. It will have to fall to someone else who will, perhaps, build on Backmann's work without falling into the pitfalls Backmann does.

Alex Kane is a student, journalist and blogger based in New York City. He is a writer for the Indypendent, where a version of this article was originally published, and a frequent contributor to the blog Mondoweiss. His work has also appeared in Salon, The Electronic Intifada, Common Dreams, Palestine Chronicle, Gotham Gazette and Extra! He blogs at (alexbkane.wordpress.com), and can be followed on Twitter (@alexbkane).

Related Links

• Purchase A Wall in Palestine on Amazon.com

"..In Lebanon, the situation is thornier. The Saudis have effectively signed off on a Syrian political revival there .."

Via friday-Lunch-Club

A somewhat resigned Michael Young:

"..If any relationship today speaks to the new dynamics in the Middle East, it is that between Syria and Saudi Arabia. 

The volatile nature of those dynamics has complicated ties between Riyadh and Damascus, when the Saudi regime would have preferred more clarity. At the heart of Saudi worries is Iraq, while at the centre of Syria's preoccupations is Lebanon. 

Earlier this month the two countries sought to reach an understanding that might advance their interests in both places...

In Lebanon, the two Arab leaders endorsed a statement that Lebanese disputes would be settled in the framework of the national unity government...The understanding stabilised Lebanon, but not for long. Each side felt the other had not respected its engagements. Syria, with few means to shape Iraqi affairs and facing Iranian and American backing for Mr al Maliki's return, rallied to that option. In turn the Syrians accused the Saudis of failing to push Mr Hariri to abandon the tribunal, even though they had compelled the prime minister to make a statement to a Saudi newspaper casting doubt on the institution's work and virtually declaring Syria innocent of his father's killing.

Despite the strains, the Syrians and Saudis will probably try to preserve their understanding. The Saudis are deeply uneasy that Mr al Maliki may come back, and even more so that this was facilitated by Iran and blessed by the United States. 

For Riyadh, the new situation only consolidates an Iranian-led Shiite order in Baghdad, even if one can dispute that Mr al Maliki is Tehran's stooge. Consequently, the Saudis hope to gain by maintaining open channels to Syria, since both need to retain a hand in Iraqi affairs as part of their regional leverage.

In Lebanon, the situation is thornier. The Saudis have effectively signed off on a Syrian political revival there, hoping this will contain Hizbollah. However, Riyadh holds a weak hand. The Syrians have spent more time undercutting Mr Hariri than they have treating him as an ally...

The Saudis are gambling that Syrian self-interest will prevail in Lebanon. Mr Assad wants to dominate alone, they believe, and seeks once again to make Lebanon more a Syrian than an Iranian card. ....... The problem with the Saudi calculation is that if Mr Assad does reassert Syrian hegemony in Beirut, Mr Hariri and the Saudis will be marginalised...

Today, Bashar Assad is replicating his father's policies, but he has more to play with. Syria's rapport with a powerful Iran has bought it valuable space with respect to the Arab states, so that in the past five years Mr Assad reimposed his writ in Lebanon over Saudi and Egyptian opposition thanks to his alliance with Hizbollah. Syria has also gained a stake in Hamas, along with Iran, and therefore can hinder Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. And Mr Assad has opened up to Turkey, which has served as a mediator between Syria and Israel, allowing him to circumvent Arab or Iranian opposition to talks if required.

 

The irony is that Syria, on its own, suffers from glaring political vulnerabilities. Its influence in Iraq is largely restricted to subverting the country's security; on the Palestinian track, it is Iran, not Damascus, that is footing Hamas's bills; on the ground in Lebanon, Syria has had to depend heavily on Hizbollah during recent years, while its own partisans are feeble; and when it comes to Israel, Syria has consistently avoided a military confrontation, and remained silent when the Israelis destroyed an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.

Yet Mr Assad has persuaded one and all, including the Saudis, that Syria is a major player. Being a good illusionist can do wonders, but it also explains why Syria is so often difficult to trust..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 2:08 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Hateful + unfortunate + regretful

Frustrated Arab's Diary   

•  

somebody must say it !!

 President Ahmadinejad has accused the US Government

of planning and executing the 911 disaster ,

for to give a pretext  for their imperialistic

and aggressive politics.

President Barrack Obama in a recent interview,

called those accusations as :

.......quote

"hateful" + "unfortunate" + "regretful" .....unquote

  

I agree , completely ,with President Obama,

it was ,indeed, hateful,unfortunate and regretful,

because G.W. Bush should not have  done it !!

 Raja Chemayel

brother in law of Sherlock Hommos

and cousin of Moustafa Roosenbloom

Posted by Tlaxcala at 11:16 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israel History in Quotes

Source


Hebrew essayist Achad Ha-Am, after paying a visit to Palestine in 1891:
"Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty; nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this. Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not already cultivated."

Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry:
"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

The Balfour Declaration to Baron Rothchild, on the 2nd of November, 1917:
"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922:
"If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down."

Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923:
"Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is our policy towards the Arabs..."

Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud), The Iron Wall, 1923:
"A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!... Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonizing."

David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985:
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department in 1940. From "A Solution to the Refugee Problem":
"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left."

Israeli official Arthur Lourie in a letter to Walter Eytan, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (ISA FM 2564/22). From Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49", p. 297:
"...if people become accustomed to the large figure and we are actually obliged to accept the return of the refugees, we may find it difficult, when faced with hordes of claimants, to convince the world that not all of these formerly lived in Israeli territory. It would, in any event, seem desirable to minimize the numbers...than otherwise."

David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben- Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978:
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."

David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157:
"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

David Ben-Gurion, one of the father founders of Israel, described Zionist aims in 1948:
"A Christian state should be established [in Lebanon], with its southern border on the Litani river. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the Arab Legion's strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo... And in this fashion, we will end the war and settle our forefathers' account with Egypt, Assyria, and Aram"

[Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir who were members of the party became Prime Ministers.] Albert Einstein, Hanna Arendt and other prominent Jewish Americans, writing in The New York Times, protest the visit to America of Menachem Begin, December 1948:
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel of the Freedom Party (Herut), a political party closely akin in its organization, method, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties."

Martin Buber, Jewish Philosopher, addressed Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the moral character of the state of Israel with reference to the Arab refugees in March 1949.
"We will have to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive. And that in its creation, and expansion; we as Jews, have caused what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora."

Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), on February 12 1952. Radio "Israel.":
"It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire."

Martin Buber, to a New York audience, Jewish Newsletter, June 2, 1958:
"When we [followers of the prophetic Judaism] returned to Palestine...the majority of Jewish people preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us."

Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas:
Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters"

Aba Eban (the Israeli Foreign Minister) stated arrogantly. New York Times June 19, 1967:
"If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of "Israel" returning to the armistice lines-- (pre June 1967 borders)

Dr. Israel Shahak, Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and a survivor of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Commenting on the Israeli military's Emergency Regulations following the 1967 War. Palestine, vol. 12, December 1983: "Hitler's legal power was based upon the 'Enabling Act', which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset [Israeli's Parliament] immediately after the 1067 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner."

Golda Meir, March 8, 1969:
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."

Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969:
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al- Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969:
"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed"

Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972:
"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war."

Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972:
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."

Joseph Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund, the Zionist agency charged with acquiring Palestinian land, Circa 194. Machover Israca, January 5, 1973 /p.2:
"The only solution is Eretz Israel [Greater Israel], or at least Western Eretz Israel [all the land west of Jordan River], without Arabs. There is no room for compromise on this point ... We must not leave a single village, not a single tribe."


Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979:
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out'"

Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982:
"[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs."

Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983:
"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."

Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983:
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."


Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983:
"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."

Isreali Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988:
"The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."

Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, Inferring that killing isn't murder if the victim is Gentile. Jerusalem Post, June 19,1989:
"Jewish blood and a goy's [gentile's] blood are not the same."

Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, tells students at Bar Ilan University, From the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989:
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service:
"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the Jordan River for future generations, for the mass aliya [immigration], and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15,1998:
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000:
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"...

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000:
"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...."

Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001:
"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."

Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio:
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

"Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum":
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5:
"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. I tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."

Ben Gurion:
In 1899, Davis Triestsch wrote to Herzl: " I would suggest to you to come round in time to the "Greater Palestine" program before it is too late... the Basle program must contain the words "Great Palestine" or "Palestine and its neighboring lands" otherwise it's nonsense. You do not get ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 Km2". " The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill -- From the Nile to the Euphrates."

Vladimir Jabotinsky (the founder and advocate of the Zionist terrorist organizations), Quoted by Maxime Rodinson in Peuple Juif ou Problem Juif. (Jewish People or Jewish Problem):
"Has any People ever been seen to give up their territory of their own free will? In the same way, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence."

David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister) quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121:
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

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