Israel's genocidal aggression on Gaza revisited

[ 29/12/2010 - 12:02 AM ]
By Khalid Amayreh

The Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip two years ago, which lasted for three weeks, was pornographically criminal and graphically genocidal. Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted innocent civilians, including children, using state-of-the-art machines of death.

Entire families were simply exterminated at the pretext that a member was involved with the resistance. Homes, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings were obliterated. Even terrified and thoroughly terrorized people raising white banners were mercilessly riddled with bullets.

The sheer criminality of the Israeli army gave the impression that Israeli soldiers were probably trying to mimic Old Testament savagery by murdering men, women, and children, and by destroying and annihilating all that breathe!!

The genocidal onslaught on Gaza is sufficient to render Israel an illegitimate state. No state under the sun, Jewish or otherwise, should behave in such a nefarious manner and remain legitimate.

Don't mention the holocaust. In the final analysis, since when did Israel have the right to utilize one holocaust in order to commit another? Or use it as red herring to divert attention from its genocidal atrocities against its victims?

To cover her crimes against humanity, Israel used her effective lying machine to the fullest. It claimed that Israel was coming under attack from Gaza and that it was merely exercising self-defense.

Such a claim, coming from a country that is based on mass murder, ethnic cleansing and land theft, is very much analogous to an imagined claim by the Third Reich that it was forced to deal stringently with Jews because SS soldiers had been coming under attack from Jewish resistance fighters at Ghetto Warsaw.

I am making this comparison because as soon as Israel ostensibly left Gaza in 2005, it imposed a hermetically tight blockade on the coastal enclave, turning it into the largest open- air prison in the world. Gazans were tormented and savaged and starved in manners unseen since Ghetto Warsaw, or probably the great Ukrainian starvation under Stalin.

Israel simply wanted Gazans to die unwept and as quietly as possible. However, when Gazans found out that they had nothing to lose; they decided to die standing on their feet, rather than walking meekly to the Israeli slaughterhouse.

Israel rained death on Gaza for 21 consecutive days, hoping to get the people of Gaza to crawl on their hands and feet, begging for mercy from an army that combined all the elements of barbarianism and brutality of the Wehrmacht, Gestapo and SS combined.

However, much of the so-called international community kept up looking on as Gaza was being killed and raped as if these abominations were occurring on a distant planet.

There is no doubt the pornographic apathy with which the so-called civilized world related to the shameful Israeli aggression in Gaza two years ago represented an all-time low in the world's morality.

What else can be said of powerful states, some of which are considered cornerstones of the international system, which related to the attempted lynching of nearly 2 million Gazans by merely saying that "Israel has the right to defend itself."!! What kind of fornication with language is this, coming from the President of the most powerful nation on earth?

To be sure, moral depravity was by means the lot of an evil empire that allowed itself to be transformed into a big whore by Israel and her supporters. Many other countries betrayed and continued to betray Gaza, including countries that shamelessly claim to be Arab and Islamic.

Unfortunately, the passage of two years since the clouds of death were hovering over Gaza has not brought any solace. The brutal ugliness of a manifestly fascist Israel is as conspicuous as ever. And Israel continues to gang up on Gaza, barring the victims of the 2008-2009 aggression from rebuilding their homes by preventing building materials from getting through into Gaza.

It is true that the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza is slightly better in comparison to what it was two years ago. However, it is also true that whatever improvement there has been is not a result of Israeli magnanimity but rather a cynical attempt to enhance her tarnished image.

This is why the free-minded people of the world must stay focused on Gaza lest Israel decides to reactivate her genocidal instincts and gang up on Gaza's children again.

We must not allow ourselves to forget the cardinal fact that the murder of Palestinian children has always been a well-guarded Zionist tradition. Unfortunately, there is no evidence whatsoever suggesting that the Zionist entity is about to forgo this evil but intrinsic tradition which for most Zionists constitutes a way of life.

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Turkey's leftists demonstrate in Istanbul in solidarity with the Palestinians

[ 28/12/2010 - 06:36 PM ]

ISTANBUL, (PIC)-- Hundreds of leftists in Turkey hit the streets on Monday evening at the Taqsim Square in Istanbul to commemorate the second anniversary of the Israeli war on Gaza Strip.

The participants hoisted Palestinian flags and placards calling for boycotting Israeli products and for breaking the siege on Gaza. They chanted anti Israel and anti US slogans.

The famous Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff, who is known for his supportive stand of the Palestine cause, took part in the rally.

He addressed the rally asking Turkish premier Recep Erdogan to sever relations with Israel, and called for boycotting all companies that support Israel such as Star Bucks, McDonalds, Burger King and others.

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Egypt Blocking Yet Another Humanitarian Aid Convoy to Gaza

Languishing in Syria, blocked by Egypt

Ken O'Keefe

Right now the Asian Convoy to Gaza is having the same problems with the Egyptian government that virtually every convoy has, including the Road to Hope Convoy (R2H).
The corruption of the Egyptian regime and the active role it plays in blockading Gaza, partial though it may be, shames all Arabs, shames all Muslims, shames all people of conscience.

As people did with R2H, I recommend putting pressure on the shameless Egyptian dictatorship. Call their embassies, alert media, expose the Egyptian role in making the delivery of aid to Gaza costly, dangerous, and expose their role in taking American bribe money to do so. Egypt, the Zionists best friend in the Arab world.

See what the Asian Convoy leaders say;

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/2602/Egypt/Politics-/Asia-convoy-waiting-for-Egypt-visa-to-reach-Gaza–.aspx 

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Jewish settlers desecrate mosque, seize 60 dunums of Palestinian land in Nablus

Jewish settlers desecrate mosque

[ 29/12/2010 - 10:03 AM ]

NAZARETH, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers attacked and desecrated a mosque in Rubin village near Ramle city in 1948 occupied Palestine in an attempt to change it into a Jewish synagogue, the Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage said.

It added in a press release on Tuesday that the fanatic Jews broke into the mosque through one of its doors and destroyed part of the wall before entering and writing racist slurs on its walls and drew the Star of David on the mosque's dome with the word Judaism written inside it in English.

The foundation said that the Jews had candles and other tools with them and offered Jewish rituals in yet another attempt to seize control of the mosque and turn it into a synagogue.

Jewish settlers seize 60 dunums of Palestinian land in Nablus

[ 28/12/2010 - 05:34 PM ]

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers seized 60 dunums of Palestinian land near the village of Jalud south of Nablus, ploughed the land, and surrounded it with a fence, local sources said.

They said that tens of settlers on Tuesday took control of the piece of land, the second within two weeks.

The 1,000-inhabitant village of Jalud is surrounded by four settlements.

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Hayya denies Egypt offered Hamas truce extension prior to Israel's last war

[ 28/12/2010 - 05:31 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Member of Hamas's political bureau Dr. Khalil Hayya categorically denied that his Movement received an offer from Egypt or other parties at the end of December 2008 calling for extending its truce with the Israeli occupation state.

In a political symposium held on Monday in Gaza, Dr. Hayya denounced those who blamed Hamas and held it responsible for the Israeli war as criminal and evil.

"The factions' assessment of the situation at the end of December 2008 was clear and united that the Zionist enemy did not abide by the truce, but despite that the factions said 'if the enemy attacked the Gaza Strip, we would defend ourselves' and they did not declare a war," the Hamas official underscored.

He stressed that the war decision had already been taken and all preparations were made to wage the war on Gaza people.

The official noted that the defensive, social, spiritual, organizational and political strength of his Movement is much bigger today than it was before the last Israeli war, but he said that these capabilities are much less if compared to the huge numbers of advanced weapons possessed by Israel.

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THE ONGOING GAZA MASSACRE

But the tragedy does not end with those who were killed. Along with thousands permanently injured, there is the incalculable psychological cost of children growing up without parents, of parents burying their children, and the mental trauma that Israel’s offensive and the ongoing siege has done to almost everyone in Gaza. There are the as yet unknown consequences of subjecting Gaza’s 700,000 children to a toxic water supply for years on end.

The Gaza massacre and the struggle for justiceAli Abunimah

27 December 2008: Israel began its deadly three-week assault on Gaza. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

The Gaza massacre, which Israel launched two years ago today, did not end on 18 January 2009, but continues. It was not only a massacre of human bodies, but of the truth and of justice. Only our actions can help bring it to an end. 
 
The UN-commissioned Goldstone Report documented evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in an attack aimed at the very “foundations of civilian life in Gaza” — schools, industrial infrastructure, water, sanitation, flour mills, mosques, universities, police stations, government ministries, agriculture and thousands of homes. Yet like so many other inquiries documenting Israeli crimes, the Goldstone Report sits gathering dust as the United States, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority and certain Arab governments colluded to ensure it would not translate into action.
 
Israel launched the attack, after breaking the ceasefire it had negotiated with Hamas the previous June, under the bogus pretext of stopping rocket firing from Gaza.
 
During those horrifying weeks from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, Israel’s merciless bombardment killed 1,417 people according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza.
 
They were infants like Farah Ammar al-Helu, one-year-old, killed in al-Zaytoun. They were schoolgirls or schoolboys, like Islam Khalil Abu Amsha, 12, of Shajaiyeh and Mahmoud Khaled al-Mashharawi, 13, of al-Daraj. They were elders like Kamla Ali al-Attar, 82 of Beit Lahiya and Madallah Ahmed Abu Rukba, 81, of Jabaliya; They were fathers and husbands like Dr. Ehab Jasir al-Shaer. They were police officers like Younis Muhammad al-Ghandour, aged 24. They were ambulance drivers and civil defense workers. They were homemakers, school teachers, farmers, sanitation workers and builders. And yes, some of them were fighters, battling as any other people would to defend their communities with light and primitive weapons against Israel’s onslaught using the most advanced weaponry the United States and European Union could provide.
 
The names of the dead fill 100 pages, but nothing can fill the void they left in their families and communities (“The Dead in the course of the Israeli recent military offensive on the Gaza strip between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009,” [PDF] Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 18 March 2009).
 
These were not the first to die in Israeli massacres and they have not been the last. Dozens of people have been killed since the end of Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead,” the latest Salameh Abu Hashish last week, a 20-year old shepherd shot by Israeli occupation forces as he tended his animals in northern Gaza.
 
But the tragedy does not end with those who were killed. Along with thousands permanently injured, there is the incalculable psychological cost of children growing up without parents, of parents burying their children, and the mental trauma that Israel’s offensive and the ongoing siege has done to almost everyone in Gaza. There are the as yet unknown consequences of subjecting Gaza’s 700,000 children to a toxic water supply for years on end.
 
The siege robs 1.5 million people not just of basic goods, reconstruction supplies (virtually nothing has been rebuilt in Gaza), and access to medical care but of their basic rights and freedoms to travel, to study, to be part of the world. It robs promising young people of their ambitions and futures. It deprives the planet of all that they would have been able to create and offer. By cutting Gaza off from the outside world, Israel hopes to make us forget that the those inside are human.             
Two years after the crime, Gaza remains a giant prison for a population whose unforgivable sin in the eyes of Israel and its allies is to be refugees from lands that Israel took by ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s violence against Gaza, like its violence against Palestinians everywhere, is the logical outcome of the racism that forms the inseparable core of Zionist ideology and practice: Palestinians are merely a nuisance, like brush or rocks to be cleared away in Zionism’s relentless conquest of the land. This is what all Palestinians are struggling against, as an open letter today from dozens of civil society organizations in Gaza reminds us:
“We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the right to travel and move freely. We want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel’s white phosphorous and chemical warfare. We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal siege. We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this oppression.”
Those of us who live outside Gaza can look to the people there for inspiration and strength; even after all this deliberate cruelty, they have not surrendered. But we cannot expect them to bear this burden alone or ignore the appalling cost Israel’s unrelenting persecution has on the minds and bodies of people in Gaza or on society itself. We must also heed their calls to action.
One year ago, I joined more than a thousand people from dozens of countries on the Gaza Freedom March in an attempt to reach Gaza to commemorate the first anniversary of the massacre. We found our way blocked by the Egyptian government which remains complicit, with US backing, in the Israeli siege. And although we did not reach Gaza, other convoys before, and after, such as Viva Palestina did, only after severe obstruction and limitations by Egypt.
Yesterday, the Mavi Marmara returned to Istanbul where it was met dockside by thousands of people. In May the ship was part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which set out to break the siege by sea, only to be attacked and hijacked in international waters by Israeli commandos who killed nine people and injured dozens. Even that massacre has not deterred more people from seeking to break the siege; the Asian Convoy to Gaza is on its way, and several other efforts are being planned.
We may look at all these initiatives and say that despite their enormous cost — including in human lives — the siege remains unbroken, as world governments — the so-called “international community” — continue to ensure Israeli impunity. Two years later, Gaza remains in rubble, and Israel keeps the population always on the edge of a deliberately-induced humanitarian catastrophe while allowing just enough supplies to appease international opinion. It would be easy to be discouraged.
However, we must remember that the Palestinian people in Gaza are not objects of an isolated humanitarian cause, but partners in the struggle for justice and freedom throughout Palestine. Breaking the siege of Gaza would be a milestone on that march.
Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament and a passenger on the Mavi Marmara explained last October in an interview with The Electronic Intifada that Israeli society and government do not view their conflict with the Palestinians as one that must be resolved by providing justice and equality to victims, but merely as a “security” problem. Zoabi observed that the vast majority of Israelis believe Israel has largely “solved” the security problem: in the West Bank with the apartheid wall and “security coordination” between Israeli occupation forces and the collaborationist Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and in Gaza with the siege.
Israeli society, Zoabi concluded, “doesn’t feel the need for peace. They don’t perceive occupation as a problem. They don’t perceive the siege as a problem. They don’t perceive oppressing the Palestinians as a problem, and they don’t pay the price of occupation or the price of [the] siege [of Gaza].”
Thus the convoys and flotillas are an essential part of a larger effort to make Israel understand that it does have a problem and it can never be treated as a normal state until it ends its oppression and occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and fully respects the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees. And even if governments continue to stand by and do nothing, global civil society is showing the way with these efforts to break the siege, and with the broader Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Amid all the suffering, Palestinians have not celebrated many victories in the two years since the Gaza massacre. But there are signs that things are moving in the right direction. Israel begs for US-endorsed “peace negotiations” precisely because it knows that while the “peace process” provides cover for its ongoing crimes, it will never be required to give up anything or grant any rights to Palestinians in such a “process.”

Yet Israel is mobilizing all its resources to fight the global movement for justice, especially BDS, that has gained so much momentum since the Gaza massacre. There can be no greater confirmation that this movement brings justice within our grasp. Our memorial to all the victims must not be just an annual commemoration, but the work we do every day to make the ranks of this movement grow.

Abu Obeida: We do not expect a downfall in the West Bank

Abu Obeida: We do not expect a downfall in the West Bank

[ 29/12/2010 - 10:14 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Abu Obeida, spokesman of Hamas's armed wing the Qassam Brigades, told the PIC Wednesday that the West Bank will get past its ordeal when it drops its alternatives to resistance, and said that the brigades do not anticipate a downfall in the West Bank, “because it is an arena of resistance with Israel; we expect it to have a new and significant resistance renaissance.”

Hamas and Qassam are still maintaining their original approach of resistance, Abu Obeida said, marking the second anniversary of the Furqan War in Gaza. “They will stand in the first line of defense of our people and protect them from any aggression.”

“Israel's threats of launching a fresh aggression on the strip are a dirty campaign to play a role in the psychological and propaganda war against our people on the anniversary of the Furqan War aimed at confusing the Palestinian arena and resistance movements. They demonstrate at the same time the failure of Israel's last so-called operation Cast Lead. Why else would Israel threaten of a new war?”

“Qassam on the anniversary of the Furqan War keeps its pledge with the Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, and it will continue to preserve their constants and fight to the last minute in order to protect its people, land, and holy sites with all force; and it will spare no effort in developing resistance and its methods.”

Addressing Hamas supporters who were jailed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Abu Obeida said: “Relief is soon, Allah willing. No matter how long the darkness of prison lasts, you will return to your families. Qassam will spare no efforts to get you released. They are one of our top priorities.”

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The Israeli Patient

Source

Peace is not dead
but neither is it alive.

The talk of the moment is whether or not
to relaunch any kind of Peace-talks
between the State of Zion and what is left over from Palestine
andwhat is left over of the Palestinians..

I am 62 years old and as far as I can remember
there has been constantly Peace-talks
and never was there Peace.........all my life !!


Of course what happened between Egypt and Israel
cannot be named " Peace"......as long as I see not one
Israeli restaurant in Cairo nor one Egyptian in Tel Aviv.

What happened between Sadat and Menahim Begin
was a bribe to the Egyptian Regime in which it will not
make any war and shall consequently get 2 Billion Dollars, yearly.

Israel has had to give back the hot-sands and the dunes of Sinai
but it keeps the Oil and the Gas.

Now back to the present :
Israel shall not negotiate because it does not want to
nor does it fit in its strategy.

The Pentagon, the Congress and the White-house,
just like Ramallah , all are "Israeli-occupied-lands"
Who can say no ?? !!

Yet I must , for the sake of my analysis ,
make a description......... if not simply a comparison.

And here it comes :

The Peace-negotiations are just like Ariel Sharon
both are in the "intensive-care" and both are kept
artificially alive........
and in both cases Israel is the doctor
and Israel has its finger on the "on-and-off" switch.

If you like it or not  !!

Peace is not a partner...........peace is a Patient
Israel is not a patient...........Israel is the doctor !!


Raja Chemayelalmost christmas....






>

Posted by Tlaxcala at 9:32 PM

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Book review: correcting mistaken notions on Arabs in America

Shira Tevah, The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2010

Many Americans think anti-Arab sentiment in the United States began after 11 September 2001. Others think Arabs are recent immigrants to America. Some think the Arab community has kept to itself, not participating in struggles like the civil rights and labor movements. Alia Malek's A Country Called Amreeka is a welcome corrective to these mistaken notions.

Malek tells the stories of Arabs in America of all ages, national origins and religions -- from Randa, the avid Republican supporter of George W. Bush, to Rabih, the man struggling to deal with his sexuality and Arab identity during the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, to Omar, the young college student sharing the "Gaza Towel Rack" and "West Closet" with a Jewish roommate.

Malek intersperses these biographical vignettes, which span from the 1940s through 2003, with descriptions of the major historical events taking place in the US and the Arab world at the time. Gathered from personal interviews with subjects and their families, newspaper articles, academic books and journals and a variety of other sources, Malek tells stories potent with humor, poignancy, mysticism and charm. Rather than narrating with a historian's voice, she brings her subject to life with dialogue, thoughts and intuitions, foods, smells and songs on the radio. Though its content is substantive, the book is a page-turner that reads like the best fiction.

A Country Called Amreeka can be read as a study of Arab immigration to the US from the 1800s until the present. Malek carefully traces the fluctuations in American public opinion toward Arabs, beginning with the 95,000 who immigrated between 1880 and 1924 during the "Great Migration." Most of them Christian, many worked as street peddlers and were seen as "un-American," as were all non-Europeans. The rising anti-immigrant sentiment led Congress to pass restrictive immigration laws in the 1910s and 1920s.

Ed Salem, one member of this early immigrant community, was a first-generation, working-class Lebanese American. Malek writes that his "people had been in Birmingham [Alabama] just about as long as anyone else's" (7). Salem became a University of Alabama football star and eventually opened a drive-in burger restaurant in 1950.

Over the next two decades, more than 10,000 Arabic-speaking immigrants arrived in the US. But the presence of large numbers of Arabs did not guarantee their acceptance. After the US's open support for Israel in the October 1973 War, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) declared an oil embargo which caused a huge increase in oil prices across the US and Europe. In response, President Richard Nixon asked Americans to turn down the thermostat, form car pools and reduce driving speeds. Arab Americans became the convenient target for blame, the object of a variety of epithets, and in Hollywood the rich Arab oil sheikh became a favorite stereotype. Another convenient stereotype was the Arab as terrorist, which began to emerge after factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization engaged in high-profile airline hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Malek explores how Arab Americans continued to be an easy scapegoat from the 1970s through the present, and were blamed for the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, several attacks on US embassies around the world, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and both World Trade Center attacks. They faced threats in the street and at the grocery store, and had their political endorsements rejected and donations returned. They were beaten up and women had their head scarves ripped off. Mosques and community centers were threatened and attacked. Former President Bill Clinton authorized the use of secret evidence to deport noncitizens, specifically targeting those of Middle Eastern descent. Polls from 2001 showed a majority of Americans supported profiling of Arabs in airports. Malek describes how 18-year-old Sawsan Nabulsi was questioned for two hours by the Secret Service at her Laketown, Michigan high school after another student accused her of plotting to kill President George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Arab Americans took part in struggles around the country for gay rights, workers' rights and civil rights. They were active participants in America's economic, political and social life. They sold affordable goods, healed people's children, cleaned clothes and homes, opened doors and answered phones. They protected their country in police forces and the military, even fighting opposite their brothers in wars in the Middle East. Malek shows the courage it took Arab Americans just to stay present, active and empathetic.

Some families and communities turned inwards, helping each other cope with the hatred directed at them on a daily basis. Some held their suffering, responding to the vitriol with silence. Others took active stances, organizing on campuses and in mosques, writing editorials and protesting US foreign policy. When they could learn nothing about their home countries from the American media, they gathered in coffee shops and told their own news. They embraced their histories and their identities.

Malek's gift for storytelling and subtle refusal to preach to her readers helps distinguish this book. She doesn't discuss "the Arab experience in America" in broad terms or employ political rhetoric on the role of the US government in creating and encouraging anti-Arab sentiment and Islamophobia. Instead, she presents facts and personal narratives, leaving the reader to perform their own analysis and form their own conclusions. The apolitical structure of the book makes it ideal for inclusion in any US history curriculum.

Broad in scope, A Country Called Amreeka contextualizes Arab American lives in US Middle East policy. Malek gives the reader a more thorough understanding of the deep-rooted connections between racism and US support for Israel than do most books on Palestine. Rather than focusing only on a single issue, she explores the relationships between multiple forces -- national and international, government and individual -- for a uniquely holistic approach to history. Her simple, yet imaginative and poetic storytelling is suited to any audience and has great potential to impact and overturn general perceptions on Arab-Americans.

Shira Tevah is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN). She studied public policy and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Related Links

• Purchase A Country Called Amreeka on Amazon.com

Vilnai: The situation on Gaza borders could explode any moment

[ 28/12/2010 - 04:44 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Israeli deputy war minister Matan Vilnai said that the security situation on Gaza borders are fragile and explosive and called for getting ready to face any possible scenario.

During his tour to the Negev region, where some Palestinian homemade rockets landed recently in retaliation to Israeli deadly air strikes, Vilnai pledged that the Israeli government would continue to provide the Israeli settlements located along Gaza borders with all necessary support.

Many Israeli officials made war threats against Gaza which witnessed lately aerial and land attacks led to the death of civilians and resistance fighters. Israel always asks Hamas Movement to stop firing rockets on its territories, although it is the party that starts to escalate its military attacks against Gaza.

In another context, the network of NGOs in Gaza called for imposing sanctions on the Israeli government and pressuring it to end its unjust blockade immediately and to facilitate the movement of goods and individuals.

The network in a statement on Tuesday also demanded the international community to bring Israeli war criminals to justice for the crimes they committed against Gaza people during the last war on Gaza, and called for activating Goldstone report in international conferences and meetings in order to do justice to the war victims and their families.

For his part, Hamas spokesman Hammad Al-Raqab stated, during a student ceremony held in a school in Khan Younis city, that the Palestinian people's rallying around their resistance foiled all Zionist schemes to eradicate it during the last war on Gaza.

Raqab added that the Israeli occupation targeted in its war on Gaza everything, the mosques, schools, homes, children, women and men, but thanks to this popular rallying, the resistance achieved victory and routed the invading Israeli occupation forces.

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Christian extremists assist Israel in displacing Negev Bedouin

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2010

Bedouin children from al-Araqib watch as Israeli forces destroy their village, September 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

Half a million trees planted over the past 18 months on the ancestral lands of Bedouin tribes in Israel's Negev region were bought by a controversial Christian evangelical television channel that calls itself God-TV.

A sign posted a few kilometers north of Beersheba, the Negev's main city, announces plans to plant a total of a million trees over a large area of desert that has already been designated "God-TV Forest."

The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an international non-profit organization in charge of forestation and developing Jewish settlements in Israel, received $500,000 from God-TV to plant some of the trees, according to the channel's filings to US tax authorities last year.

A coalition of Jewish and Bedouin human rights groups have denounced the project, accusing God-TV and the JNF of teaming up to force the Bedouin out of the area to make way for Jewish-only communities.

No one from God-TV was available for comment, but in a video posted on its website, Rory Alec, the channel's co-founder, said he had begun fundraising for the forest after receiving "an instruction from God" a few years ago. He said God had told him: "Prepare the land for the return of my Son."

Standing next to the "God-TV Forest" sign, Alec thanked thousands of viewers for making donations to "sow a seed for God," adding: "I tell you Jesus is coming back soon!"

Part of the forest has been planted on land claimed by the Aturi tribe, whose village, al-Araqib, is nearby.

Al-Araqib has been demolished eight times in recent months by the Israeli police as officials increase the pressure on the 350 inhabitants to move to Rahat, an under-funded, government-planned township nearby.

Earlier this year, Joe Stork, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, criticized the repeated attempts by Israeli authorities to eradicate the village and displace its residents.

"Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling long-standing land claims is outrageous," he said.

Human Rights Watch and other international human rights groups have criticized Israel for harsh measures taken against the people of al-Araqib and the other 90,000 Bedouin who live in Negev villages that Israel refuses to recognize. They accuse the government of trying to pre-empt a court case moving through Israeli courts aimed at settling the Bedouin ownership claims.

God-TV's involvement in the dispute has prompted fresh concern.

Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, said the JNF, which has semi-governmental status in Israel, had set a "dangerous precedent" in accepting money from God-TV.

"The Israeli authorities are playing with fire," he said. "This dispute between the Israeli government and the Bedouin is a long one that until now focused on the question of land rights. But the involvement of extremist Christian groups like God-TV is likely to turn this into a religious confrontation, and that will be much harder to resolve."

The JNF did not respond to questions about its involvement with God-TV or the Negev forest.

Gordon said it was particularly worrying that Alec was using the language of Biblical prophecy in justifying his decision to finance the forest.

The channel, which has become one of the most popular global evangelical stations since its founding in Britain 15 years ago, claims a potential audience of up to a half-billion viewers, including 20 million in the United States.

Stephen Sizer, a British vicar and prominent critic of Christian Zionist groups, described God-TV as part of an evangelical movement that believes Israel's establishment and expansion are bringing nearer the "end times" -- or the moment when, according to Christians, Jesus will return for the second time.

Its followers, he added, believed that, by dispossessing Palestinians of their land and replacing them with Jews, Jesus's return could be expedited.

"Funding aliyah [Jewish immigration] and planting trees in the desert may look innocuous but it's actually their way to side with the Israeli right's hardline policies towards the Palestinian population."

Sizer said there was increasing co-operation between Israeli institutions and Christian evangelical groups, which have begun basing their operations in Israel.

God-TV has proclaimed itself the only television channel to broadcast globally from Jerusalem, following its relocation there from the UK in 2007.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Union of Reform Judaism in the US, has repeatedly called on Israel to sever contacts with Christian Zionist and evangelical groups, describing them as opposed to "territorial compromise under any and all circumstances".

God-TV has close ties to Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an umbrella group founded in 2006 by John Hagee, a Texan pastor, that lobbies on behalf of Israel in Congress.

Hagee, a frequent preacher on the TV channel, has regularly courted controversy with comments seen as anti-Semitic. Most notoriously, in a sermon in the late 1990s, he called Adolf Hitler "a hunter" who carried out God's plan for the Jews to return to Israel by leaving them "no place to hide" in Europe.

CUFI and the other evangelical groups have lobbied strenuously in Washington on behalf of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and for Israeli control over the holy sites in East Jerusalem, said Sizer.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has been especially keen to seek out support from Christian evangelical groups, according to Shalom Goldman, a professor at Atlanta's Emory University, who recently published a book on the Christian Zionist movement.

Last year CUFI announced a $38 million marketing drive to bring more Christian tourists to Israel, including the establishment of a "task force on global Christian relations" jointly overseen by Hagee and Netanyahu.

Haia Noach, the director of the Negev Coexistence Forum, which campaigns for Bedouin rights, said her organization feared more of God-TV's trees would be planted on Bedouin lands in the coming weeks. A depot has recently been established close to al-Araqib to store four bulldozers.

"The villagers refuse to abandon al-Araqib, even though it has been destroyed many times. But once a forest is planted there, there will be no chance to go back," she said.

She said she feared the goal was to build Jewish communities on Bedouin land. She cited the case of Givat Bar, which was secretly established by the government on part of al-Araqib's lands in 2003.

Repeated letters to the JNF for information about their forestation program had gone unanswered, she said.

Awad Abu Freih, a community leader at al-Araqib, said the house demolitions and forest-planting were only the latest measures by the government to remove the villagers.

Repeated destruction of al-Araqib's crops by spraying them with herbicides was ruled illegal by Israel's Supreme Court in 2004.

Efforts to move 90,000 Bedouin off their lands close to Beersheba have been intensifying since 2003, when the Israeli government announced plans to move them into a handful of townships.

The Bedouin have resisted, complaining that the official communities are little more than urban reservations that languish at the bottom of the country's social and economic tables.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Shin Bet Tortures Palestinian Prisoners, Keeps Them from Lawyers: Report

28/12/2010 The Israeli Security Agency commonly known as Shin Bet is preventing as many as 90 percent of Palestinian prisoners from consulting with an attorney, even though civilian and military legislation state clearly that such prohibition should be rarely applied, a study published recently reported.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the Palestinian Prisoners' Society reported that the Shin Bet utilizes interrogation methods that run contrary to international law and Israeli laws, during prolonged periods when prisoners are kept from meeting with lawyers.

Dr. Maya Rosenfeld, the author of the study, reported that among these interrogation methods are tying prisoners for a long time to a chair with their hands behind the back, sleep deprivation, threats (usually of harming family members), humiliation and being kept for long periods in unsanitary cells.

The Shin Bet has refused in the past to provide data on the numbers of prisoners who are prevented from meeting with a lawyer.

In the absence of official data, The Public Campaign and the Prisoners Society carried out research and cross-referenced their information with different sources in order to estimate the numbers of prisoners who are prevented from meeting with lawyers.

According to estimates of the authors, out of 11,970 Palestinians the Shin Bet admits to interrogating between 2000 and 2007, the numbers of those whose right to an attorney was blocked ranged between 8,379 to 10,773.

According to the report, preventing a meeting with a lawyer for long periods of time enables illegal interrogation aimed at exhausting the prisoners and moving them to cells where undercover agents pretend to be regular prisoners. The report mentions a number of cases in which after a prolonged interrogation, the physical and psychological exhaustion resulted in admissions of relatively minor violations which were carried out several years earlier and did not justify the violation of the prisoners' rights.

In response, the Shin Bet said it has “legal clearance” to keep certain detainees from lawyers.

It stated that "the phenomena of terrorism and espionage, which are the subject of Shin Bet investigations, have unique characteristics which justify the use of essential court arrangements to counter them. These arrangements were established by legislators and received extensive approval over the years by the courts, especially by the Supreme Court in its rulings.”

“One of the tools given to the Shin Bet by law is the authority to prevent meetings between the suspects and a lawyer,” the agency said considering accusations of preventing prisoners from meeting their lawyers as “baseless claims”.

Prisoner access to counsel is considered a basic right in Israeli law. Preventing such access is considered out-of-bounds and the maximum period such prohibition can be in effect, in security related cases, is 21 days. In Israeli military law, the minimum time permissible is 15 days and the maximum is 90 days.

• IOF kidnap once again MP Tal from his home in Al-Khalil
• Dweik: Efforts to release detainees from PA jails yielded nothing
• Israeli secret report on inhumane conditions of detainees disclosed.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Iranian General Murdered in Israel’s Ayalon Prison?



Ali Reza Asgari, Iranian general murdered by Mossad in Ayalon Prison?

 Hold on to your hats because this post is going to be a wild ride.

New and astonishing developments in the case of Prisoner X, known to a source within Ehud Barak’s inner circle as Ali Reza Asgari, retired Iran Revolutionary Guard general and former deputy defense minister.

I exposed the name of Prisoner X here a few weeks ago. 

Today, brings news from Israel that Asgari is dead in his cell.

According to the standard version, he committed suicide in his cell within the past week or so.

Ynet reported the suicide story and noted that it was under gag order.  Of course, this story was erased from the internet, but I’m posting a copy of the article which was taken down from the Ynet site.


Screenshot of expunged Ynet story about Prisoner X's suicide

 What is so interesting about this story is that you have to combine two different articles (the second from Haaretz) to gain more insight into what really happened here.  The Haaretz article, which was not removed under gag order because it was written in a sufficiently vague form that it could slip under the gag order, noted that there are investigations of those who die while in secret detention (the case with Asgari).  One of the considerations in such an inquiry is whether a “government agency” may have caused the death:

Did such an agency have an interest in silencing the detainee?  And if so, was a death declared a “suicide,” really murder? In the case of the death of a prisoner under special treatment [held by the security services], why it was not within the power of the Prison Service to prevent the suicide or some other form of violent death.

I should also confirm at this point that my original source for this story reaffirms specifically that it is Asgari, and not some other secret security prisoner who died.  My source, I should add, only confirms the “official” government version that he committed suicide and not that he was murdered.

This raises the question: why was Asgari considered so hot a figure that someone in the security services may’ve wanted him dead?  It should be noted that it would’ve have been relatively easy for someone to kill Asgari.  An earlier Ynet article, also gagged, noted that he was held incommunicado and had no contact whatsoever with the prison guards or other authorities.  Any prisoner held under such extreme conditions of isolation could be killed at will.

It gives me very little pride as a blogger/journalist to say that the news of his incarceration exposed here may’ve made him a marked man.  No one wishes to be in the most remote way the cause of another’s death.  But the reasons I wrote what I did were honorable and intended to break the stranglehold and impunity of the Israeli security apparatus.  If I am right I regret to say that Ali Reza Asgari has been sacrificed on this altar.  He is a victim of the Israeli secret police and I only hope his death will not have been in vain. It is they, and no one else including me, who is responsible for his death.

Why kill him?  It would be incredibly difficult to explain to the world how and why Israel held a senior Iranian official in one of its prisons when it was telling the world he was enjoying his new life as a defector in Virginia.  It would enormously complicate relations with Turkey (on whose soil he was abducted) and Iran (with whom Israel is almost in a state of war).  It also seems likely that the security services, as I guessed in my earlier post, must’ve exhausted the useful information they could get from him.  And so in yet another sense he was expendable.

But expendable for whom?  It would appear that the Mossad, which originally kidnapped him would be the main culprit.  If he was murdered, the authors of this crime must’ve figured that it would be that much more difficult for anyone to pursue his trail if they murdered him than if he remained alive.  The question now becomes what they’ve done with his body.  Will they make it too disappear as they did Asgari himself when they kidnapped him in Istanbul in 2007?  This would be the ultimate insult and would render his killers virtual impunity for the crime.  His family, which protested in Teheran last month on the anniversary of his fourth year in captivity, will have no body to mourn, no one to bury.  One wonders whether, as in China, at some unspecified future date, Israel will offer the family what’s left of him plus a bill for his execution.  I apologize for the darkness of this comment, but how else is one supposed to react to this abomination?

A word about the official version of suicide: originally the Mossad put out the story that Asgari hadn’t been kidnapped and wasn’t in Israel.  Both of these stories appear to have been false.  The suicide story appears equally self-serving.  Remember too that the Mossad’s method of killing Mahmoud al-Mabouh in Dubai allowed the world to believe he has died of a heart attack.  Only a far more sophisticated toxic screen determined that he’d been drugged as part of a murder.  So the Mossad is very good at these smokescreens when it wants to cover the tracks of its murders.  And further, Amir Oren is implicitly telling his readers, under the strictures of the gag which demand Kabuki-like forms of communication, that our prisoner was murdered and didn’t commit suicide.

What is especially stupid about this murder is that it virtually destroys the a ability of any western intelligence agency to encourage any Iranian to defect.  Can you imagine an interchange between a prospective defector and his handler?  Look what you did to Asgari.  You expect me to expose myself to the possibility of such a fate?

And what will this do to future cooperation among intelligence agencies who may be running Iranian spies and potential defectors?  If rumors are correct and Asgari was lured to Istanbul by a German BND-run false flag operation, and then rendered to the Mossad after capture, why would any such agency willingly cooperate with Israel in future, unless the goal is to glean as much information as possible from such a figure and then kill him when he becomes inconvenient.

This story cries out for further exposure on the part of the western and Israeli media.  Frankly, so far I have found it impossible to place this story in a more MSM publication.  Two Israeli journalists discovered that they couldn’t get permission to interview me about the story.  And other western media have not been willing to publish my research.  Let’s hope with this alarming news that will change.

Otherwise, Asgari will be yet another almost anonymous statistic in the rapidly heating Cold War between Israel and Iran.

Writing in 972 Magazine, Dimi Reider has captured the implicit meaning of Amir Oren’s Haaretz report as well (that the Ayalon prisoner was murdered, rather than committed suicide). He did so independent of any conversation with me. To be fair, Dimi doesn’t agree with my identification of the prisoner with Ali Reza Asgari.

There is one notable caveat:the Israeli NGO, Zaka, which reports all unnatural deaths in the country, says on its website that the Ayalon prisoner was age 32 and died on December 15th. Asgari is in his 50s. So either Zaka reported incorrect information or the man who died is not him. But even if it is not, the likelihood remains that this prisoner was murdered while in detention, a grave crime.
Source


Related posts:

1. Israel’s Prisoner ‘Mr. X’ is Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Abducted by Mossad
2. Iranian General’s Wife Accuses Turkish Intelligence of Collaborating With Mossad in 2007 Kidnapping

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Rezka: Consultations with factions target political partnership

[ 28/12/2010 - 12:21 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Dr. Yousef Rezka, the political advisor to Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya, said that the consultations with the national factions and figures over a cabinet reshuffle were meant to boost political partnership.

Rezka, who is a member of the committee assigned with consulting those factions, told the PIC that the main goal of such a step was to involve all Palestinian political spectrum in shouldering the responsibility of administering the country, hoping that joint work would bridge gaps among those factions.

He pointed out that the committee made consultations with all member factions of the PLO and those who are not members, noting that all appreciated Hamas's stand.

The factions promised to study the proposals and respond to the committee later on, he said, noting that some of them informed the committee that it would not participate based on previous positions not to take part in a national unity government.

Rezka said that Islamic Jihad did not respond so far while others opted to declare their stands via the media, pointing to the democratic front, which is participating in Salam Fayyad's illegitimate government in Ramallah and could not participate in any other government in Gaza.

He said that the committee would contact independent figures for the same purpose within the few coming days.

Taha: Hamas confers with factions over Israeli military escalation

[ 28/12/2010 - 11:05 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader, said that his movement would discuss the Israeli military escalation on the Gaza Strip with various Palestinian factions on Tuesday.

Taha told the PIC on Monday night that his movement would ask the factions to shoulder the responsibility and to put forward the national interest above any other factional interest.

He said that Hamas would act as part of a unanimous agreement reached by all factions regarding the current situation in the Palestinian arena and would protect it regardless of its results and forms.

The only item on the agenda of this meeting, however, would be the Israeli military escalation, the Hamas leader underlined.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The Scandals of WikiLeaks

The Scandals of WikiLeaks

One inherited-democrat and one elected-democrat.

Among the great scandals which Wikileaksdid expose........is the news that Silvio Berlusconi
was holding a lot of   " wild-hot-parties"

How come I was never invited ?? !!


Another scandal was that Saudi Arabia
does want to get rid of Iran.....

How come nobody ever suspected  it  , before ?? !!

And the worse was that Julian Asange, in Sweden,
has had problems with  his condoms....


At least this show that :
Julian Asange must be following the instructions of the Vatican !!


What conclusion do we make here ??:

If Berlusconi ever also used condoms and he would have invited
the King of Saudia to his wild-parties........there will be no scandals !!



Eng. Moustafa  RoosenbloomScandaleologue
 

Posted by Tlaxcala at 7:20 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian