Libyan Rebel Govt. To Arm Rebels In Syria

[The CIA is repeating its mistakes (from the point of view of all decent human beings) from the anti-Soviet phase of the grand terror war--training terrorists in advanced military skills and then turning them loose upon the rest of the world.  This is the fine art of projecting "respectable" evil in its highest form.  The American Imperialists get to play "Good Guys" on both ends of this process--We claimed to be providing "humanitarian assistance" to Afghanistan since the late seventies, when we created the first "mujahedeen" (highly skilled military specialists) who later became known as "al-Qaeda"; we have repeated the process today in Libya, and now, the Libyan "mujahedeen" spread their disease to Syria.  Through this finely honed art of state-sponsored terrorism, we have successfully undermined nearly all of the Middle Eastern allies of the Palestinians.  The war against Syria and Hezbollah is intended to unleash the full force of American airpower, in order to carry-out the mission that Israel alone could not accomplish in 2006.  (Despite all the years of Israeli bluster, the IDF has not defeated any adversary by the mere power of its threats.  It has been symbolically parading its military prowess down the streets of Teheran since the American terror war began, but they have not fazed the Revolutionary Guard, even with Stuxnet and all the back-biting assassinations over the years.  Israel's only formidable power is its nuclear arsenal. 

The time for words is over.  Obama's revolutionaries and his partners in crime (particularly Turkey) have taken the "irregular warfare" to Syria.  The thing about irregular war is that it can easily turn into regular warfare at any given moment.  When it becomes apparent that Western asymmetric forces cannot defeat Syria and Hezbollah, then waves of regular bombers can be called in, just like in Libya.  From the Imperial view, it becomes apparent that the "mistake" of creating the Islamist mujahedeen armies has not been a mistake at all.  It was always obvious where it would lead, if you created armies of highly-trained veteran "holy warriors" and released them upon the world.  This is America's greatest war crime--its premeditated state terrorism.] 

Libya to arm rebels in Syria

Ruth Sherlock

Divided … a demonstration for Bashar al-Assad. Photo: AP

MISRATA, Libya: Syrian rebels have held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, it has been revealed.

At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested assistance from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms and, potentially, volunteers.

”There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source said, on condition of anonymity. ”There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

It has also emerged that preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Syrian National Council – the country’s main opposition movement – visited Libya earlier this month.

”The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council,” said Wisam Taris, a human rights campaigner with links to the council.

The disclosure came as the Syrian military said rebels had raided an air force base outside the city of Homs and killed six pilots.

Rebel attacks have become daily occurrences since the onset of the insurrection. The conflict has claimed at least 3500 lives, mainly as part of a crackdown on protests by the government.

Syria’s regime has continued to defy pressure from the Arab League, ignoring Friday’s deadline to accept the deployment of 500 human rights observers, raising the possibility that economic sanctions might be agreed upon this weekend.

Last month, Libya’s interim government became the first in the world to recognise Syria’s opposition movement as the country’s ”legitimate authority”.

Activists said large shipments of weapons had not yet been sent, mainly because of logistical difficulties. But proposals for a ”buffer zone” inside Syria, monitored by the Arab League, or the likely emergence of an area inside the country controlled entirely by rebels could solve this problem.

”The [Libyan] council’s offer is serious,” Mr Taris said. Turkey, which has denounced Mr Assad’s regime, is already sheltering about 7000 Syrian opposition activists, including the leader of the Free Syrian Army, the nascent rebel movement, in a ”safe zone” along Turkey’s border with Syria.

Sources in the Libyan town of Misrata suggested that some weapons might already have been sent. Some smugglers were caught selling small arms to Syrian buyers in Misrata, said a man who trafficked guns to Libya’s rebels during the country’s civil war.

However, Libyan officials denied some of the claims. ”This is what you hear in the street,” said the leader of the Misrata military council, Ramadan Zarmoh. ”Officially there is none of this. I would never send any fighters to fight outside the country.”

Ministers from the Arab League are expected to meet in Cairo this weekend to consider sanctions against Syria.

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, pledged on Friday to keep up talks with Syrian opposition groups in an attempt to support a transition to a stable democracy.

Meanwhile, a United Nations human rights panel has called on Syria to respond to reports its security forces had tortured children in their crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The Committee against Torture said in Geneva that it had received ”numerous, consistent and substantiated reports” of widespread abuse occurring since the start of the uprising against Mr Assad’s government eight months ago.

”Of particular concern are reports referring to children who have suffered torture and mutilation while detained,” said the panel’s chairman, Claudio Grossman.

He also cited reports of ”extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; arbitrary detention by police forces and the military; and enforced and involuntary disappearances.”

The committee normally reviews each country’s record every four years, but took the unusual step on Friday of issuing a spontaneous demand to the Syrian government to explain its actions.

Telegraph, London; Associated Press

German News Reports Second Suspected Syrian Nuclear Facility Identified

Report: Second Suspected Syrian Nuclear Facility Identified

(RTTNews) - Western intelligence agencies have identified a second suspected nuclear site in Syria which, they believe, was set up to produce fuel for the country’s secret nuclear program, a German newspaper reported on Thursday.

Munich’s ‘Sueddeutsche Zeitung’ newspaper claimed in its report that photos taken from inside two buildings near Damascus, obtained by Western intelligence agencies, showed equipment characteristic for uranium conversion.

According to the report, experts have expressed doubts that facilities were used to make fuel for Syria’s suspected al-Kibar nuclear reactor, which was destroyed in an Israeli bombing in September 2007.

A later inspection by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found traces of unnatural uranium at the site of the suspected reactor. Syria, however, maintains that the traces of uranium found were residue from missiles used to destroy the site by the Israelis.

The IAEA inspectors had collected samples from a suspected nuclear facility in June 2008 after the U.S. alleged that Syria had secretly built the nuclear reactor with North Korean help in the country’s remote eastern desert.

U.S. intelligence agencies claim the site resembled to Yongbyon reactor in North Korea and say that the facility could produce weapon-grade nuclear material if it was not destroyed in the Israeli air raid.

Syria rejected the U.S. allegations, saying that the building destroyed in the Israeli air strike was an unused military facility under construction. Damascus also insists that it is not pursuing a clandestine development program as alleged by Western countries.

The IAEA had said in an earlier report that the destroyed Syrian site had the characteristics of a nuclear reactor. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, however, did not rule out the possibility that the site was being used for non-nuclear purposes when it was destroyed in the bombing.

Although Syria had allowed IAEA inspectors to take samples from the site of the suspected nuclear reactor in 2008, it later blocked them from making follow-up visits to the site. The agency says that Syria is yet to answer some questions regarding the suspected nuclear facility.

Also, Damascus has since denied IAEA inspectors access to several buildings which it suspects to be associated with Syria’s secret nuclear program. Those buildings reportedly included the possible uranium conversion sites mentioned in the German newspaper report.

The IAEA refused to comment on the report but it had earlier made attempts to identify the source of fuel for the so-called al-Kibar nuclear reactor.

The latest developments come as the IAEA is preparing for a meeting of its governing board early next month to discuss several issues, including Syria’s continued refusal to allow its inspectors access to suspected nuclear facilities.

by RTT Staff Writer

For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com

 

Wanted – A Rigid/Flexible America-Friendly Definition of Terrorism

[It is an impossibility that the IJT could come-up with an internationally acceptable definition of "terrorism," to be used in the Hariri case, when the tribunal in that case was set in motion as a ploy to convert a false flag attack into an indictment of American and Israeli adversaries, Hezbollah.  If there is any question which definition of the term "terrorism" to pursue, the Lebanese crafted definition or the most acceptable international legal interpretation, then the jurists themselves are set on a "terroristic" path, of sorts, which has used an implied threat of international force against the Lebanon Resistance, as a means to force political submission.  The American instigated STL in Lebanon appears to work backward from the assumption of Hezbollah guilt, looking for evidence to support that assertion--none of this "innocent until proven guilty crap."  The Hariri assassination was definitely terrorism, since all political assassinations are clearly acts of terrorism-- violence or murder of high profile individuals to intimidate political underlings, "making an example" of an enemy.  All Mafia hits would fit the definition of "terrorism," by their nature, intended to intimidate and force submission from adversaries.

Lenin had a better definition than the Lebanese Criminal Code--"The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize."

There is no need to define specific acts of terror, other than simply "violence on individuals to force compliance or submission from others."  "Violence" need not be fatal or even bloody to fit the known acts of terror we have seen--poisoning, kidnapping, any suppression of individual rights against the person's will is violence, violating the person.  "Terrorism" is using such violence to overwhelm inalienable human rights.

The prosecution has proposed its own politically expedient definition that is total bullshit:

as an act by which “a substantial section of the public reasonably and significantly fears more than momentarily from the present onward, indiscriminate personal harm”. This definition says nothing about the terrorists' extortion of political goals.  The total silence about the state-sponsorship angle of all large acts of terrorism is deafening.  The goal of the prosecutors is not to produce a solid definition, but a "working tool" for future trials.  Experts contend that fixing a definition would enable the prosecution to link terrorist crimes to leaders--exactly what the Imperial side doesn't want.

Until states are willing to define the crime of terrorism clearly and concisely, eliminating all wiggle room for the Imperial wigglers, state terrorism will continue masquerading as an international war of self-defense, while eliminating groups and individuals who actually are trying to defend themselves from the scourge of humanity--State-Sponsored Terrorism.]

Wanted – A definition on terrorism

By International Justice Tribune (IJT 122)

For decades, international lawyers have wrangled over the question – What is terrorism? Is it an act designed to spread terror? Does it have a political motive? Does it involve an attack on a few people or alot of people? Since 1914, philosophers have pondered whether the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Sarajevo can be classified as an ‘act of terror’. More recently, the September 11 attacks in the US, have brought the issue of international terrorism to the forefront of debate, and with it the question of its very definition.

By Geraldine Coughlan, Leidschendam

Today, while there are a variety of definitions of terrorism in a dozen international conventions, the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon near The Hague, has taken the first step towards arriving at a single definition of the crime of terrorism.

The Court is due to rule on 16th February, on which definitions of terrorism and other crimes that it will apply. It is expected that this ruling will set a precedent for other international courts, which also want to see a universal definition of terrorism as much as they want to see their prime terrorist suspects, in the dock.

The Lebanon tribunal is the first international court with jurisdiction over the crime of terrorism, but it is grappling with how to apply Lebanese and international law, before including a terrorism charge in potential arrest warrants. As the tribunal applies Lebanese law, but has an international character, the question is – should a definition of terrorism be based on Lebanese law or international law?

In its first hearing on 7th February, the court’s lawyers and judges began thrashing out the question of what constitutes an act of terrorism and other crimes such as conspiracy and homicide, as they prepare to prosecute suspects for the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.

As the tribunal is based on the Lebanese Criminal Code,

which already has a definition of the crime of terrorism, the prosecution and defence have now agreed on applying that definition, which is that ‘acts of terrorism’ are acts which are intended to cause a state of alarm and are committed by means such as explosive devices, liable to pose a public threat.

The prosecution has even proposed its own definition,

as an act by which “a substantial section of the public reasonably and significantly fears more than momentarily from the present onward, indiscriminate personal harm”.

The prosecution claims there’s no need to prove political intent as a motive for a terrorist act and argues that its own definition will act as a ‘working tool’ for use in future trials.

Most legal experts agree that it is important to define terrorism and other notions such as conspiracy and joint criminal enterprise, to make it easier to link crimes to leaders. This is one of the difficulties in cases before the ICTY and suspects could expect tougher sentences, if the definitions of these crimes were more clear and concise.

The defence, though, is against agreeing on firm definitions, claiming this would prematurely impose them on trial judges, limiting the rights of the accused.

Meantime, there is still no consensus on how the world community regards the crime of terrorism and its place in domestic and international law. The crux of the matter lies in the difference between Articles 2 and 3 of the Tribunal’s statute. Article 2 refers solely to Lebanese law, while Article 3 relies directly on international law, and so reflects the international character of the Tribunal. Does this mean there is a conflict between the definition of terrorism in the Lebanese Criminal Code and the notion of terrorism as reflected in international law? The judges are adamant that international law is relevant in determining the notion of terrorism and as Lebanon has ratified the Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism, the judges believe the Lebanese definition of terrorism should be based on the norms of international law.

As the tribunal is moving into “uncharted territory in international law”, the judges are concerned about whether the public will easily be able to understand the complex legal issues involved in defining terrorism.

The presiding judge Antonio Cassese, warned that Lebanon, as a founding member of the UN, is now set on a “course of judicial accountability” in aiming to establish a common definition of terrorism, which is a common threat to us all. However, until states can agree on a single definition – it will be argued that the notion of terrorism does not actually exist.

Terra Incognita: Careful what we wish for

Photo by: Associated Press

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

Chaos has a much better track record of producing more tyranny and fascism, than it does democracy.

‘Egyptians want what Americans have, they want freedom. [US President Barack] Obama needs to tell [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak, ‘You are not leaving in September, you are leaving now; we are not giving you seven months.’” Those were the words of Fox News contributor Tamara Holder.

The mantra that Egyptians want freedom and democracy has swept the world. Alongside this argument is a romantic attachment to the Egyptian protesters, a weird admiration for the “people” and the “mob.”

All the misinformed support ignores the reality: Just because people riot or protest for something doesn’t mean they are democracy-loving moderates.

The lesson being taught to the Egyptian people by statements like “Mubarak must go now” is that democracy is about rioting and protests. Roger Cohen of The New York Times argues that an “election in September is unimaginable.” Maybe an election in America in November is unimaginable, if enough people protest, say 2 percent as inEgypt; perhaps we too should just change elections based on their demands. Haaretzasks, “Is a democratic Egypt too much for Israelis to take?” But what we are seeing isn’t a “democratic” Egypt.

The Israeli and American Left is especially euphoric in its embrace of the Egyptian masses.

Anshel Pfeffer writes that “people are scaring us with talk of an Islamist takeover of our big neighbor.

But doesn’t Egypt deserve democracy too?” He elaborates: “We’re all suffering from Orientalism, not to say racism, if the sight of an entire people throwing off the yoke of tyranny and courageously demanding free elections fills us with fear rather than uplifting us, just because they’re Arabs.”

According to the doyens of the Left, Israel is a “Western outpost” that does not integrate into the Middle East and thus didn’t prepare for the uprising in Egypt.

IN THE US, all the op-eds by the likes of David Brooks and Maureen Dowd are toasting the crowds in Egypt. Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institute explained that we must not fear an Islamist takeover. “We overlearned that lesson and we need to get beyond that panicky response. There’s no way for us to go through the long evolution of history without allowing Islamists to participate in democratic society.”

Kagan also argues that the US shouldn’t support a slow transition from Mubarak, like elections in September, but rather the immediate removal of the tyrant.

The message is clear from all over the Western world: Egypt’s protesters are true democrats. They are romantic; they are Americans without knowing it and to support them we need to have the government of Egypt vanish overnight and have some sort of chaotic transition. There is no greater sign of democracy than chaos. The Islamists all want democracy; we shouldn’t fear them, but embrace them because they represent the genuine feelings of the people. We are racists because we see large numbers of people marching, shouting and burning, and we fear their rage.

Democracy isn’t about burning down the headquarters of the other party. It isn’t about paralyzing the state so that no business can be conducted and nothing can happen. Oddly, democracy isn’t about mass protests and riots. Democracy is primarily about voting and peaceful transitions of power. The other freedoms that follow from that, like the press, assembly, religion, equality and free speech, are products, hopefully, of democracy.

Democracy has, since its inception in ancient Greece, always been plagued by its evil twins, fascism and tyranny. It is strange to hear, but democracy’s opposite is not tyranny; it is monarchy.

Tyranny is the antecedent or result of democracy.

“Tyranny” comes from the Greek word tyrannos, defined by Plato as “one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects and uses extreme and cruel tactics – against his own people as well as others.”

Tyranny came about through the rise of popular cults associated with war heroes and wealthy men who seized power through coups. Syracuse, an ancient city state, was a democracy from 467 BCE but in 407 a man named Dionysius I seized power and became a military dictator. The philosopher Plato, a product of Athenian democracy and a democrat himself, became a friend and supporter of this tyrant.

Rome, a republic for many years before it became an empire, suffered from tyranny as well. Sulla, a military leader, was made “dictator” by the Roman Senate for the purpose of “making of laws and for the settling of the constitution.” Like the tyrant of Syracuse, Sulla murdered those he suspected to be enemies of the state.

TO UNDERSTAND tyranny’s relationship with popular democracy, we must fast forward to the period 1917 to 1950. In that period almost all of the liberal democracies in Europe were brushed aside by popular fascist or communist movements. It began with Russia where a brief period of democratic government in 1917 was followed by the communist seizure of power.

The fascists and their enemies used mass protests and chaos, including rioting, to secure power against weak democratically elected patricians who proved incapable of dealing with the street. Yet those who look to Egypt and admire the protesters don’t see that these types of mass protests, while they demand democracy, also walk hand in hand with dictatorship.

It isn’t about the Egyptians being Arabs. It isn’t about Israel “integrating” into its region. It’s about the fact that no one notices that what is going on in Egypt is not a sign of democracy, it is just a sign of chaos and mass protest. Mass protest may cause a government to implement democratic reforms.

But as we have seen in Tunisia, when the government simply collapses and runs away, that doesn’t represent a “democratic transition.”

Chaos, as there is in Egypt, has a much better track record of producing more tyranny and fascism, than it does at producing democracy.

Those who journeyed to Iran in 1979, like the popular French philosopher Michel Foucault, believed they were witnessing “democracy.”

But they were witnessing the rise of Islamic fascism.

No one remembers that. No one who teaches Plato and Foucault recalls that despite all their ideals, they flirted with tyranny; it was sexy, it was strong, it was popular and muscular and in the streets. Our philosophers were wrong. And we are wrong today when the very existence of a mob, rather than orderly lines at the ballot box, makes us feel that “democracy is happening.”

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

No Rapture, Israelis Are Khazars, False Preachers–This Sounds Like My Kind of Church!

Is Modern-Day Israel in Bible Prophecy? Are Modern-day Jews of Abraham Seed?

Millions expect Israel to play a major role in God’s future plan for earth. Could they all be wrong? Is there a conspiracy to deceive God’s people? What is the Biblical evidence concerning modern day Israel?

Many people today consider the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine to be a direct and dramatic fulfillment of Bible prophecy.
Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, a phenomenal best seller of the last few decades, and Jerry Jenkins and Tim Lahaye’s Lift Behind, along with Bishop T.D. Jakes declares that the end of the world will come within the lifetime of the generation that saw the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, hereby applying the words of Jesus: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” (Matthew 24:34)

Coupled with this fascination with Israel is a novel teaching regarding the return of Jesus, called the “secret rapture.” These books and many other speaks for many today who expect God secretly to take the “church” to heaven prior to the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on its old site where the sacred Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock, now stands. According to this position, after the “church” is “raptured” to heaven, there will be seven years of the worst period of famine, bloodshed, and pestilence ever experienced by man. During this great tribulation the focus will be on God’s dealings with the Jews, who are again given the responsibility for the evangelization of the world.

According to secret-rapture preachers, the battle of Armageddon will climax the end of the seven-year tribulation as the nations of the earth take sides over the future of Israel. When mankind teeters on the brink of incinerating the world, Jesus will return gloriously and save man from self-extinction. At that time Jesus will set up a literal one-thousand-year reign on earth with Jerusalem functioning as the spiritual capital of the world.

Most evangelical periodicals and pulpits teach this view today, and to those who do not know better, it might appear that this prophetic scenario, known as pretribulationism, has been the traditional teaching of the Christian church since New Testament days. Nothing is further from the truth. Be not deceived.. Did the architects of the creation of modern day Israel have any thing to do with the development of the rapture theory? Where did the Rapture theology originate? Is the crisis in the Middle East and the war in the Iraq have anything to do with the erroneous rapture theory?

Is there a master conspiracy at work?

According to dispensationalists John Hagee, Jack van Impe, Ken Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, John Walvoord, Grant Jefferies, Tim Lahaye, Benny Hinn, Clarence Larkin, H. Caldwell, TD Jakes and others who teach and preach about the Rapture, Israel has two dispensations, or time periods, in which they functions as God’s special instrument of salvation. Between these two periods of time comes the dispensation of the “church”. The church received a heavenly reward at the time of the rapture, while Israel received an earthly reward at the end of the tribulation.

There is no support in the New Testament for such an erroneous view.

The chief reason why the modern state of Israel has no prophetic significance is that after the Jews as a body rejected Jesus as the Messiah, God gave to the Christian church the special privileges, responsibilities, and prerogatives once assigned to the ancient Jews. No longer were the Jews to be His special people with a prophetic destiny.

Rom.2:28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; vs.29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.

All the promises of a glorious kingdom on earth once given through the Jewish prophets to the Jewish people became void because the Jewish people as a nation did not fulfill the conditions of these prophecies. Failing to receive the glory that could have been Israel’s is probably the saddest story in literature. Placed at the crossroads of the ancient world, God furnished them with every facility for becoming the greatest nation on the earth. God wanted to reward Israel with every physical and spiritual blessing as they put into practice the clear-cut principles that He had graciously taught them through His prophets (Deuteronomy 7, 8, 28).

The Old Testament records the sad story of how the vineyard of Israel produced, not the mature fruit of a Christ-like character, but “wild grapes,” a misinterpretation and perversion of what the God of Israel was really like. “What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” (Isaiah 5:4 RSV).

Even when the Jewish nation was suffering the bitter consequences of disobedience during the Babylonian captivity, God mercifully promised that a restored Israel was possible and that there was yet time to recover its special role as His representative on earth – if it would honor His law and submit to His principles. Even then the Jews could have become, if faithful, the head and not the tail, in matters physical and spiritual; all nations would have looked upon Jerusalem as not only the center of wisdom but also the spiritual capital of the world (see Isaiah 45:14; 60:1 – 11).

When the Jews returned to Palestine after the Babylonian captivity, the promises given to Abraham and expanded through the writings of Moses and other prophets would have been fulfilled; the whole earth would have been alerted for the first advent of Christ, even as the way is being prepared for His second coming today.

Missed Their Last Opportunity.

These Old Testament prophecies that picture Israel dwelling in peace and prosperity, with all nations beating a path to her doors, could have been fulfilled 2000 years ago if they had indeed prepared the world for the first coming of Jesus (see Zechariah 8:14). But instead of fulfilling their greatest assignment they missed their last opportunity, and Jesus their Lord finally had to pronounce with irrevocable judgement: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not Behold your house is forsaken and desolate” (Matthew 23:37, 38 RSV).

Those who regard the establishment of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of those Old Testament prophecies overlook the fact that these promises were made either prior to their release from Babylonian captivity or during the rebuilding days soon after their return. God would have fulfilled these promises if Israel had been faithful and obedient to the conditions on which the promises were made.

Although God promised a “second chance” to Israel after their failure leading up to the Babylonian captivity, He promised no “third chance” to them after their final rejection when their Lord Himself “came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (John 1:11 RSV)
But God did not give up, even though Israel as a nation had failed Him. Although corporate Israel no longer was to function as God’s special agent, the individual Jews who received and obeyed Jesus Christ would constitute the new organization through which He would now work.
Paul describes this remarkable transition in Romans 9 to 11, where he appeals to individual Jews (such as himself) to respond to God through Jesus, join those Gentiles who have found in Him the solution to their anxious, sinful condition, and together arouse the world to the simple fact that God wants to make an end to sin and its misery by setting up His eternal kingdom composed of those who have found in Jesus the promised Saviour.

Those who preach and teach this erroneous Rapture doctrine are purposely misleading multitudes. This doctrine was created by the Jesuits as an anti-reformation and anti-protestant tool to divert attention away from the Catholic and the Pope whom the reformers had identify as the anti-Christ in Revelation. Those who teach and preach the rapture theory are proxies and agents for the Kabbalists and those who want to establish a New World Order (NWO). The Rapture theory has more to do with politics than theology, more to do with mans involvement in world affairs than Gods involvement, more about Zionism than the people of Zion.

 

THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
Arthur Koestler

…but that does not alter the fact that the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European — and thus perhaps mainly of Khazar — origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur “

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry…

The Khazars’ sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.

In the second part of this book, “The Heritage,” Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term “anti-Semitism” would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based “on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.”

Army of terror: the legacy of US-backed human rights abuses in Colombia.

 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/30075547.html#

Harvard International Review –  Winter, 1998

PETER SANTINA, Staff Writer, Harvard International Review

After three decades of civil war, Colombia is finally approaching peace. On August 7, 1998, Andres Pastrana assumed the presidency, replacing the discredited Ernesto Samper. The country’s two largest guerrilla armies, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), had refused to meet with Samper because he received US$6 million in campaign contributions from the Cali drug cartel. The Pastrana administration has moved quickly toward negotiations with the guerrillas, agreeing to the FARC’s demand to demilitarize an area the size of Switzerland in southern Colombia for 90 days while the two sides negotiate. Pastrana was elected by the most votes in his nation’s history and has established a much more cordial relationship with the United States than his predecessor, making the first Colombian presidential visit to the United States in 23 years. President Bill Clinton and Pastrana signed a joint agreement to fight the drug trade, and Clinton promised US$280 million more in US aid to Colombia.

Since his election, however, Pastrana’s popularity in the polls has fallen nearly to the level of Samper’s, due to an enormous amount of social unrest. Mounting opposition to the government’s plans to cut public spending with privatization reforms manifested itself in a three-week national strike of 800,000 Colombian state employees. The strike, which ended on October 27, resulted in the death of seven union leaders. This tragedy highlights the key to Colombia’s human rights catastrophe: political murders. Unions are targeted by right-wing paramilitaries for their opposition to the power of business, especially multinational corporations. According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, in 1997 alone 156 trade unionists were killed in Colombia. Although unions are one target of political violence, peasants living in the countryside have suffered even more. Brutal paramilitary forces target those suspected of collaboration with the guerrillas and have committed numerous human rights abuses. This relationship between the official military and the death squads has been investigated by the US State Department, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, international think tanks, and human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Government Abuses

According to the US State Department, “the [Colombian] Government took no significant action to restrain these powerful paramilitary groups” in 1997. A major factor in the abuse is indeed the complicity of the Colombian government, particularly the armed forces, in the rightist agenda of the paramilitaries in the face of a growing leftist guerrilla movement. The Colombian government, threatened by the socialist rebels, has been unwilling to prosecute either paramilitaries or army soldiers for their human rights abuses because they are more concerned with losing power to the socialist rebels than protecting the basic human rights of Colombian citizens.

General Bedoya, the commander of the armed forces, has said that military courts effectively punish violators, citing a high overall conviction rate for military violations. When asked by Human Rights Watch, however, he could not cite a single conviction for a human rights violation; most military tribunal convictions are for technical offenses such as failure to follow orders. A detailed report on Colombian human rights abuses released by Human Rights Watch in 1998 states that in cases of humanitarian law violations, “allegations against officers are rarely investigated.” The US State Department noted in its 1997 report that, “at year’s end, the military exercised jurisdiction over many cases of military personnel accused of abuses, a system that has established an almost unbroken record of impunity.” The Colombian National Police, although it has improved its record since 1994, continues to show a reluctance to prosecute paramilitaries. According to the Attorney General, the National Police have not addressed over 200 warrants for the arrest of paramilitaries.

Problems with the military and human rights, however, extend beyond a lack of prosecution for abuses. The State Department’s Colombia Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997 blamed government forces for “numerous serious abuses,” including extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances, and the torturing and beating of some detainees. On July 29, 1998, President Samper publicly apologized to the families of 49 people murdered by government agents between 1991 and 1993. In each of the state massacres mentioned by Samper, defendants accused of responsibility were absolved by military tribunals until the human rights branch of the Organization of American States found the Colombian government liable for the deaths. Samper conducted a similar ceremony in 1995, in which he accepted government blame for military sweeps through the town of Trujillo in 1989 and 1990 that left 107 peasant leaders and activists dead.

Paramilitary Terrorism

These crimes pale in comparison, however, to those of the brutal paramilitary forces. In the first nine months of 1997, 69 percent of the 3,500 political murders in Colombia could be attributed to right-wing paramilitary groups, according to the US State Department. Death squads continue to roam the Colombian countryside, terrorizing peasants who they suspect of sympathizing with the guerrillas. On October 25, seven trucks of about 100 paramilitary troops entered the northeastern city of San Carlos. They killed ten civilians and abducted 15 others who were on their blacklist of alleged guerrilla collaborators, and left graffiti condemning Pastrana’s overtures of peace toward the guerrillas. Later that same day, other paramilitaries invaded the town of Altos del Rosario and murdered 11 residents.

Unfortunately, this is not simply a recent phenomenon–the Colombian government and armed forces have a long history of cooperation with the death squads. In 1968, the Colombian government legalized the organization and promotion of groups of armed civilians, known as “peasant self-defense groups,” in the context of the growing guerrilla movement. These small private armies were equipped, trained, and logistically supported by the armed forces. The political and economic elites who felt threatened by the guerrillas were particularly supportive of these “self-defense” groups, as they are of the paramilitary forces in Colombia today. These groups were eventually banned in 1989, because of their inneither established procedures to break up the paramilitary groups that they had created, nor did it cut them off from future aid from the armed forces.

Perhaps the most prominent Colombian paramilitary figure is Carlos Castano, who traces his first involvement in paramilitary activity to the training he received in the Bombona Battalion of the armed forces in the early 1980s, when the military, business owners, and ranchers formed the activist group Death to Kidnappers (MAS). By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered over 240 political killings by the MAS death squad, whose victims included elected officials, farmers, and community leaders. In his report, Internal Affairs Chief Carlos Jimenez Gomez identified 59 active-duty members of the police and military who belonged to MAS, including the commander of the army’s Bombon Battalion.

The government again contributed to the formation of paramilitary groups in 1994, when it established “special private security and vigilante services” whose members were allowed to arm themselves in self-defense. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, known paramilitaries participate in these “Convivir” associations. The Office of the Superintendent of Private Vigilante and Security Groups admitted in November 1997 that it was incapable of fulfilling its responsibility to oversee these legal, state-supported paramilitary organizations. Members continue to be investigated on charges of homicide, torture, and other grave human rights abuses by the government.

The massacre of May 16, 1998, in Barrancabermeja is a clear example of the friendly relationship between the military and the paramilitaries. Camilo Aurelio Morantes, the head of the paramilitary Autodefensas de Santander y Sur del Cesar (AUSAC), has admitted to ordering the attack on Barrancabermeja, which left 32 civilians dead. Morantes is known by the army and the government to be a paramilitary leader, yet he has not been prosecuted for his leading role in the massacre. Furthermore, witnesses have alleged that soldiers waved the paramilitaries through the army check-point while entering and leaving Barrancabermeja. The government investigated the role of ten of the soldiers involved, and the only one detained was an Army corporal who was charged for personally participating in the massacre. A humanitarian worker in Antioquia told Human Rights Watch, “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stopped at a joint army-paramilitary roadblock. The soldiers are there with their green uniforms and the paramilitaries with their blue uniforms. It’s like different units of the same army.”

US Military Aid

The United States provides a great amount of support for the Colombian armed forces despite its abusive track record. First, the United States continues to train Colombian military officers at both the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning and the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. Representative Joseph Kennedy and the Washington Office on Latin America jointly released a report in July 1998 documenting the specific abuses of Colombian graduates of the School of the Americas.

Before the report was released, a video was shown of Colombian soldiers beating unarmed farmers participating in a peaceful protest and then attacking cameraman Richard Velez, who suffered serious internal injuries. The soldiers were operating under the command of SOA graduate Nestor Ramirez. Another SOA graduate, General Hernan Jose Guzman Rodriguez, was dismissed in November 1994 to improve the armed forces’ public image. Guzman protected and supported the death squad MAS between 1987 and 1990, during which time it was responsible for at least 147 murders. In 1986, Guzman commanded soldiers who detained, tortured, gang raped, and executed a Colombian woman and then invented a story that she had committed suicide by shooting herself in the nape of her neck. Guzman’s portrait has hung in the SOA “Hall of Fame” in Ft. Benning since 1993. A final example is Captain Gilberto Ibarra, SOA class of 1983, who forced three peasant children to walk in front of his patrol and detonate mines, killing two of them and seriously wounding the other.

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Zionist torturers and Colombian oligarchs–(Yair Klien and MAS Death Squads)

Zionist torturers and Colombian oligarchs

NorteAmericanos_for_Bolivar
Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:44:30 -0800

A connection between the Israeli Military man Yair Klien and the Colombian Death Squads. A deadly union of Zionist torturers and Colombian oligarchs. NorteAmericanos for Bolivar —– Original Message —– Subject: Colombia’s Paramilitaries and Israel New World Phalange, Colombia’s Paramilitaries and Israel by Jeremy Bigwood December 04, 2002 “I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis.” Carlos Castaño, Mi Confesión 2002[1] In 1983, an intense 18-year-old Colombian arrived in Israel to take a yearlong course called “562.”[2] He was no normal foreign exchange student.  His name was Carlos Castaño and the course was about making war, something that he would exceed at:  he was destined to become the most adept and ruthless paramilitary leader in Latin America’s history. Carlos Castaño had been impelled along this vengeful path after his cattle-ranching father had been killed during a botched rescue attempt by the army while being held for a “tax” ransom by the FARC – Colombia’s strongest left-wing guerrilla army.[3]  Bitter over their father’s death, Carlos and his older brother, Fidel, vowed revenge, a vengeance that would dovetail with both the interests of the Colombian right-wing landholding classes and US foreign policy. It is a vengeance that continues into the present.. The brothers first offered their services as scouts for the Colombian Army’s Bombona Battalion – fingering FARC sympathizers, providing intelligence and even participating in military operations.  But Fidel – some 14 years older than Carlos – concluded that by merely working for the army, they were going to get nowhere.[4]  One of the battalion’s majors introduced them to a local paramilitary death squad called “Caruso,” with whom they started a killing spree.  When local police started to investigate them, they found it necessary to operate even more clandestinely.  Unlike in many other third-world countries under the U.S.’s shadow, Colombia’s police and judiciary have sometimes played an independent role from the Army. Later, according to press reports,[5] Fidel started his own paramilitary death squad called “Los Tangueros,” named after his ranch, “Las Tangas.”[6]  The Los Tangueros was responsible for more than 150 murders during the late 1980s and early 1990s.  When discussing this period in his book, Castaño openly talks about murders he has committed or ordered, making his habit of executing what he calls “‘guerrillas’ in towns” sound routine.[7]  In one massacre alone, the Los Tangueros captured dozens of campesinos from a neighboring town.  Back at the ranch,  “they tortured them all night with crude instruments before shooting some and burying others alive.”[8] Los Tangueros along with other death squads dispersed throughout the country would evolve into the present 9,000-strong paramilitary force in Colombia, [9] now killing up to twenty civilians per day.[10] During the early 1980s when Castaño’s father was captured by the FARC, rural Colombia was rife with small diverse paramilitary units working for the army and the landholding upper classes.[11]  Many of these groups were merely the enforcers and protectors of the local wealthy, while others worked protecting the  “new rich” of the cocaine trade from the “taxation” of the left-wing insurgencies.  Some of these groups bore the names of petty criminal gangs or the names of their leaders.  They liked to call themselves  “self-defense” or “auto defense” groups, but here we will use the term ‘paramilitaries” to avoid confusion.  In the 1980s, these paramilitary groups were disparate and not well trained, and sometimes got involved in turf battles between themselves.  If they were to take the offensive against the steady advances of the leftist guerrillas, the paramilitaries would need both political/military training and unification.  And while these paramilitaries essentially worked for the same counterinsurgent goals as those of US foreign policy, the US could not directly support them.  But another country could. Exactly how Carlos Castaño got to Israel is still a mystery, as is precisely which entity trained him there. But whoever set it up, the Israeli course “562″ definitely had a strong effect on Castaño.  “Something clicked in me, and I began to behave differently[12]…My perception of this war changed radically after my trip to Israel,”[13] he said in his “as told to” Colombian run-away bestseller of interviews edited by Spanish journalist Mauricio Aranguren Molina. Carlos Castaño was clearly a good and highly motivated student. Of his studies in Israel, which is the subject of chapter 6 of in his book, he reminisces: “Unlike what one might think, we studied in the classroom more enthusiastically than in the military training.  The classes emphasized the regular and irregular ways in which the world operates… It was there that I rounded out my education… [The teachers] insisted on us carrying ourselves well, in both the way we dressed and in the way we spoke in public.  I also received a class on how to enter and register in a hotel and we analyzed how to behave around immigration police in airports.  We read in libraries and spent long sessions on both the self-esteem and the security that an individual should have.  This was an invaluable process which taught me to respect and have confidence in myself, to triumph during tough intimidating moments.”[14] Most importantly for the eager student, he “received lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms.”[15] And of course, there was also a military component: “I received instruction in urban strategies, how to protect oneself, how to kill someone, or what to do when someone is trying to kill you, depending on the situation.  We learned how to stop an armored car and use fragmentation grenades to break through and enter into a target.  We practiced with multiple grenade launchers, and learned how to make accurate shots with RPG-7s, or shoot a cannon shell through a window.”[16] “We also took complementary courses on terrorism and counter terrorism, night vision equipment, and parachuting.  We also learned how to make homemade bombs.  In short, we learned what the Israelis know, but, in all sincerity, very little of all of this has been applied to the war in Colombia.  I got a very good basic education, and there I learned how to do the most important thing – I learned how to control fear…”[17] Castaño also describes training that could not have taken place without the express permission of the highest authorities of the Israeli Defense Forces, such as when he performed “airborne maneuvers and [we] parachuted at night over islands of the Mediterranean. I had to carry weights as ballast to adjust my free-fall speed.” [18] Not all was study for Castaño in Israel, and he used his free time to meet with Colombian soldiers undergoing regular military training there, in which the worst human rights violators in the western hemisphere  were being trained by the worst human rights violators in the Middle East.  But these were precisely the connections that would prove so useful in the future. “In the Sinai desert, I also had the opportunity of meeting military men from our country, the men of the Colombia battalion.  I did not meet the battalion as a whole, but on my R & R days, we went to the same places, and I spent time in the company of sergeants and officers.” [19] Castaño summarizes his epiphany in Israel: “Upon returning to Colombia, I had become another person… I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements, although I repeat, in Israel I didn’t only learn about things related to military training.  There I became convinced that it was possible to destroy the guerrillas in Colombia.  I started to understand how a people could defend itself against the whole world.  I understood how to bring into the “cause” a person who had something to lose in the war, with the aim of converting him into the enemy of my enemies.”[20] By 1985, shortly after Castaño returned to Colombia, some of the paramilitary groups that were springing up had become completely dependant on the monies from drug trafficking.  Indeed, some paramilitary units had merely evolved as such from drug protection rackets.  In fairness it is true that some of the paramilitary groups were not related to illicit drug protection: some were formerly the guards of rich landowners, cattle ranchers and the like.  A secret 1989[21] Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence document [22] includes a section on the “Contamination of the Paramilitaries by Drug Trafficking,” even places a time and a place on this event, although there is other evidence (below) that this took place earlier.  “The economic crisis facing the paramilitary forces in 1985 was resolved by an alliance with drug trafficking… This alliance came about in mid-1985 when the Paramilitary intercepted a camper full of cocaine… After conversations with the drug traffickers through the initiative of HENRY PEREZ, the Paramilitary forces returned the camper and the drugs to their owners, receiving in exchange for it a four-door Toyota pickup…”[23] It should be noted that Henry Perez was part of the Caruso paramilitary gang, at the time also known as the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio (Paramilitary Militia of Magdalena Medio)- as were the Castaños.  In fact, Castaño calls Henry Pérez one of the “fathers” of the paramilitaries, along with his brother Fidel, and the previously mentioned Bombona battalion Major Alejandro Álvarez Henao, who had introduced the brothers to their first death squad.[24]  From this point onwards, these paramilitaries expanded, protecting operations of the Medellín cartel and others, including that cartel’s competition in Cali. The DEA was also watching: Its agents had noticed a paramilitary/drug trafficking connection at least as early as 1993: “Intelligence indicates that some of Colombia’s private paramilitary groups have been co-opted by cocaine trafficking organizations. Throughout the 1980s, the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio (Self-Defense Militia of Magdalena Medio), one of the most important of these groups, had close ties with the Medellín Cartel’s organization.”[25] A year later, in another report, the DEA looked at the relationship between the left-wing insurgencies and the drug trade, accurately stating: “Despite Colombian security forces’ frequently claim that FARC units are involved directly in drug trafficking operations, the independent involvement of insurgents in Colombia’s domestic drug production, transportation, and distribution is limited…No credible evidence indicates that the national leadership of either the FARC or the ELN has directed, as a matter of policy, that their respective organizations directly engage in independent drug production or distribution.  Furthermore, neither the FARC nor the ELN are known to have been involved in the transportation, distribution, or marketing of illicit drugs in the United States or Europe.”[26]  In other words, the left-wing insurgencies taxed the production of coca or its products’ transportation through insurgent-controlled areas, but were not involved in its processing to cocaine, shipping or marketing – as opposed to the paramilitaries who ran and still run processing factories and were and still are actively involved in shipping it out of the country.[27] Paramilitary leaders also set up clandestine training schools in Colombia, or “schools for assassins” as they were called by the previously mentioned secret 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence report.[28] The first such school that was discovered was called “El Tecal,”[29] and it trained the first of the paramilitary forces, and as these extended themselves deeper into the countryside and received greater funding form the drug trade, they formed other schools in other areas.  For instance, “Cero Uno [Zero One] located at kilometer 9 of the Puerto Boyocá-Zambito road,” and “El Cincuenta”[30] [# 50] located on the road between Delirio and Arizá (Santander).”[31] There were also “satellite schools” with names reminiscent of bars such as “Galaxias.”[32] According to the DAS report, “Personnel graduated from these schools to incorporate into the ‘paramilitary-narcotrafficking’ structure with an aim to undertaking four specific jobs: a. Protect the community and the properties of narcotrafickers from the guerrillas and rival groups. b. Be responsible for the personal protection of the heads of the cartels and those of the paramilitary forces, functioning as bodyguards. c: Produce cocaine in the laboratories of that organization… d: Attack members of the Unión Patriótica[33] [legal political party affiliated with the FARC] and members of the government or political parties that opine against the drug trade.”[34] To qualify as a candidate for training in these “schools for assassins” one had to be interviewed by narco Henry Perez and his cohorts, all friends of the Castaño brothers. Students were selected by “the express recommendation of a rancher, farmer or narcotraficker from the region.” with questions like “What is your ideology?  Are you capable of killing your father, mother or brother if it can be confirmed that they are guerrillas?” The candidates were told that the war may go on forever and that the only enemy was communism.  And “upon the evaluation and verification of all of the information supplied by the candidate, the candidate is given a medical exam and placed in a basic training course.  During the first stage of training, recruits are selected to work in the financial apparatus (drug production) or security (bodyguards, patrolmen).  The training course includes: a.) Camouflage techniques,  b.) Handling small arms and parading, c.) Explosives, d.) Personal defense, e.)  Identity preservation, f.) Body guarding, g.) Intelligence, h.) Counterintelligence, i.) Communications,  j.) First Aid.”[35] But apparently this training by fellow Colombians was not enough, and in 1987 the Israelis were called in to help.  In the mainstream media the 16 Israeli and British trainers were presented as “mercenaries,” perhaps because of the bias of the Colombian DAS agents who wrote a report on them. These foreign military trainers were far too well connected to be ordinary “mercenaries”-they clearly acted with some government approval, most definitely that of Israel, and probably of some US entity also – as we shall see below. Castaño, who attended these courses, said that members of the Colombian Army had actually arranged the courses, which featured the training by a famous Israeli officer, Yair Klein.[36] Again, it was Castaño ally Henry Perez who picked the candidates – along with drug kingpin Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha.  According to his book, Carlos Castaño took part in the courses, and their organization occupied five[37] of the 50 scholarships.[38] a.  A group of five Israelis taught the course called “PABLO EMILIO GUARIN VERA” in the “El Cincuenta” school of Puerto Boyocá. b.  The instructors were in the area for a period of 45 days after having entered the country through Cartegena (Bolivar).  Initially, they stayed in the “El Rosario” residence of Puerto Boyocá and later in a rustic house on the Isla de la Fantasía (Fantasy Island)…[39] There were also 30 scholarships awarded so that students could train further in Israel, just as Castaño had done: “According to what these instructors said, they were going to send the best 30 students for further schooling in a special course that would be taught in Israel.”[40] Thirty paramilitaries being sent to Israel would have clearly required the permission of the Israeli Defense Forces – the Israeli government.  It is hard to imagine anything else for a country continually at war. And there was a Nicaraguan Contra connection: “TEDDY, the Israeli interpreter told our source that they should shorten and speed up the course because they had promised to train the Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica.”[41] Anyone who thinks that these were simple “for hire” mercenaries would do well to analyze this quote.  At the time, only with express US government approval – particularly that of the State Department and CIA – could one get into the contra camps located in Honduras or Costa Rica, let alone a group of men bearing arms.   These Israelis were clearly trusted at the highest levels of both the Israeli and US governments. During this time, and even up until the present, the Colombian state has not shown itself to be a monolith.  Even today, in spite of all of the US influence, one still finds government ministries that refuse to go along with the official line crafted by the US State Department and filtered through the presidency or some other ministry.[42]  This explains why part of the Colombian state -justice and police – were so clearly disturbed by the paramilitaries’ advances that in 1990 police units raided a Castaño property and exhumed 24 decomposed corpses, some showing signs of torture.[43] And there were other troubles too: competition was growing between the Medellín and Cali drug cartels. According to a DEA Intelligence Report from 1993, “By 1990, for reasons that are still unclear, the Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio and the Medellín Cartel emerged as bitter foes.”[44] Former ally, Medellín cartel drug-kingpin Pablo Escobar was now being hunted by the Colombian state, aided by US intelligence agencies and the DEA.[45]  The Castaño brothers helped the Colombians and the U.S. in the hunt for Escobar, which resulted in Escobar’s death.  Carlos had lines of communication open to the actual police squad that killed Escobar, as he knew “the brother of the famous police colonel, Hugo Martínez Poveda, commander of the Search Team that killed Pablo Escobar” from time both of them had spent in Israel.[46] After Escobar was out of the picture, the Castaño brothers consolidated and unified the paramilitaries under the name “Auto-Defensas Unidas de Colombia” (Unified Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), known by its Spanish acronym AUC: “From these death squads grew the Peasant Paramilitary Force of Cordoba and Urabá (ACCU), the oldest and largest of the AUC’s confederation of privately funded armies across the country. This was a result of Carlos Castaño’s new leadership: He transformed a regional protection force into a national political movement..”[47] The effect was dramatic.  The paramilitaries grew in size from a few thousand to nine thousand or more, and as Time magazine reported in 2000: “Fear of AUC vengeance is one reason at least 1 million peasants fled their homes during the past decade.”[48]  Like the Nicaraguan contras, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads, the paramilitaries were known for using excessive violence to terrorize the population, and on at least one occasion paramilitary units used chainsaws to torture and kill their victims.[49] But there were also losses for the paramilitaries. In 1994, Carlos’s elder brother Fidel or “Rambo” as he was known – then the paramilitaries’ leader – was – according to Carlos — killed in a chance combat with FARC guerrillas in northern Colombia.[50]  However there exists some doubt as to whether he is really dead.  The State Department apparently believes that he may still be alive and a recent article rumours him to be living in Israel.[51]   Whatever the truth may be, Carlos took over the top paramilitary position at that point, and the movement grew even more, even acquiring a rudimentary air force, something that CIA black propaganda was always trying to pin on the guerrillas,[52] so it could induce the mainstream press to argue for more military aid to bolster the Colombian government. In reality, the insurgents didn’t have an air force, but the paramilitaries did and still do. By the late 1990′s, the paramilitaries had acquired several helicopters, along with maintenance mechanics and pilot training.[53]  Helicopters are extremely costly to purchase and maintain, but are very useful in this type of war, as Carlos was soon to find out.  According to his autobiography, his life was saved during the Christmas holidays of 1998 when a large FARC contingent attacked his base-camp in a surprise assault. It was the Israeli-trained pilot and[54] paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso[55] who rescued him in a paramilitary helicopter.[56] Castaño has often met in secret with government officials, but by 2000 the meetings were being openly reported.  On November 6, 2000, he met with Colombia’s Interior Minister Humberto de la Calle of then-President Andrés Pastrana’s Government.  As a result of the meeting, Castaño released two of seven legislators that his paramilitaries were holding captive.[57]  Indeed, at the time of this writing, Castaño and Mancuso are in discussion with the new Colombian government.[58], [59] As the movement expanded, continuing to absorb other paramilitary organizations, it needed arms, and probably had several sources for them, one of which came to light last May.  It should come as no surprise to the reader that the suppliers were Israelis. Israeli arms dealers have long had a presence in next-door Panama and especially in Guatemala (see side bar).  While some of the details of this particular deal have been contested and are still sketchy, one thing is clear: by a series of misrepresentations, GIRSA, an Israeli company associated with the IDF and based in Guatemala was able to buy 3,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition that were then handed over to the paramilitaries in Colombia.[60]  This may remind us of what Carlos Castaño said about his course in Israel – when he received “lectures on how the world arms business operates, and how to buy arms,”[61] – probably complete with the connections to do so. This arms deal featured tier upon tier of deniability and smokescreens.  Although Colombian police uncovered the deal, no one has been indicted over it.  The only players who appear to have known what was going on were the Israelis and the paramilitaries. The Nicaraguan police who sold the arms thought they were trading them for Israeli mini-Uzis and Jericho pistols.  The US State Department, which had recently placed the Colombian paramilitaries on its “terrorist” list claims though spokesperson Wes Carrington that the department was under the impression that the fully automatic assault rifles were going to collectors in the US![62]  Somehow that bait doesn’t go down easily. The Uribe – Castaño Connection Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, like Castaño, also lost his narcotrafficking father to the FARC, [63] but in the case of Uribe, the father died fighting on his ranch that was attacked by the insurgents.[64]  And there are other similarities, too: like Castaño, the Uribe family has had close ties to the cocaine trade, even renting out a helicopter to the business.[65]  In fact, Uribe’s father was once indicted for his role in the famous Tranquilandia cocaine-processing lab, after it was taken out by a combined DEA-Colombian police operation [66].  During the 1980′s (check dates) Uribe was head of Civil Aviation (Aerocivil) in Colombia and controlled all of the aviation licensing throughout the country at a time when small planes did most of the drugrunning.[67]  When Uribe was governor of Antioquía department in the mid-1990s, he helped set up a paramilitary force called Convivir,[68] in which paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso is rumored to have served.[69] Legitimizing the paramilitaries During the last Colombian presidential elections, a “cleansed” Uribe was voted into power supported by the US State Department.  Many of the plans for his government are based upon a US-generated Rand Corporation study.  A major part of both the Rand study and Uribe’s plan involve the creation of a large civil defense/government informer force that will be beholden to the Colombian state.  The Rand report, like all things Plan Colombia, was first written in the United States.  It bases a new Colombian Civil Defense counterinsurgency structure on the Peruvian “Ronda” system — which acted under Army supervision and was greatly responsible for reducing the size of the Shining Path guerrillas as well as committing a multitude of human rights abuses. Apparently, Uribe’s idea is that Castaño’s paramilitaries first have a ceasefire against the army – which is in itself a falsity since the AUC always worked alongside the army –  then the paramilitaries would become legal entities of the Colombian state under a different name.  Thus Castaño’s paramilitaries will become legitimized and continue the counterinsurgent war with the direct assistance of the United States, their bloody hands washed in State Department PR. At that point, Israel will no longer be needed in Colombia.  And indeed, it would prefer to be forgotten, as there is no doubt that it shares some blame for the many years of ongoing bloodbath in Colombia, which kills as many as 20 people a day[70] – some 70% or more of which is attributed to the paramilitaries, totaling tens of thousands over the last decade.[71] Most of those murdered are killed for merely being suspected of sympathies to the insurgency, not for being actual combatants. Unfortunately, we can expect the training of Phalange-like paramilitary groups to continue throughout the world, as the Israeli state gleefully continues to undertake operations that are deemed too distasteful for its US counterparts. ——————————————————————————– ENDNOTES [1] Mi Confesión:  Carlos Castaño Revela sus Secretos, as told to Mauricio Aranguren Molina, Editorial La Oveja Negra Ltda, Bogotá Colombia. First edition, December 2001.   Also available on the AUC website: http://colombia-libre.org/colombialibre/miconfesion.htm [2] Mauricio Aranguren (ibid) page 107 [3] Dead Man’s Bluff, Stephen Dudley, The Washington Post, Sunday, November 24, 2002 [4] Mauricio Aranguren, page 88 [5] Colombia’s Other Army: Growing Paramilitary Force Wields Power With Brutality, Scott Wilson, Washington Post, March 12, 2001 [6] Dead Man’s Bluff, Stephen Dudley, The Washington Post, Sunday, November 24, 2002 [7] Mauricio Aranguren, page 107 [8] Dead Man’s Bluff, Stephen Dudley, The Washington Post, Sunday, November 24, 2002 [9] Colombia’s Growing Paramilitary Force, Jeremy McDermott, BBC News January 7, 2002 [10] Personal communication, Charlie Roberts, Colombia Human Rights Commission, 11/02/02 [11]  The present period is similar to another period in recent Colombian history called “La Violencia”, or one could simply view it a continuation of that period.  “La Violencia” is the name given for the 1945-1965 period of violence between the “Liberals” and “Conservatives” that started shortly after the assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Elecier Gaitan (see Paul Wolf’s excellent websitehttp://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/gaitan/gaitan.htm <http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/gaitan/gaitan.htm>  ).  During that conflict, the more progressive Liberals formed guerrilla bands, and the Conservatives, backed by the State, the Church, and to some degree the United States, fought these insurgents with both a regular army and the police, which, at that time, essentially acted as death squads, often massacring entire communities.  La Violencia was ended through negotiations in 1965, although its root causes were left unsolved, which is why the conflict persists today. [12] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [13] Mauricio Aranguren, page 107 [14] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [15] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [16] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [17] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [18] Mauricio Aranguren, page 110 [19] Mauricio Aranguren, page 110 [20] Mauricio Aranguren, page 111 [21] All paramilitary groups in Colombia were made illegal in 1989. [22] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document [23] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, pages 11 and 12 [24] Mauricio Aranguren, page 87 [25] DEA Intelligence Report 1993, obtained through the Freedom of information Act.  DEA Request Number 01-12152-F [26] Insurgent Involvement in the Colombian Drug Trade: Drug Intelligence report, DEA Intelligence Division, June 1994, obtained through the Freedom of information Act.  DEA Request Number 01-1257-F [27] There are some, yet unproven indications of greater insurgent involvement in the trade since the time of that report. [28] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document [29] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 9 [30] “La 50″ according to Castaño, Mauricio Aranguren, page 99 [31] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 12 [32] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 13 [33] It should be noted that the paramilitaries were extremely successful in assassinating civilian members of the legal Unión Patriotica political party (UP).  And indeed, this bears great similarity to the present Israeli government practice of selective assassination as a political toll.  In the case of the UP, it was the only political party on this hemisphere that has actually been decimated – about 90% of its leadership was exterminated by the paramilitaries and sometimes directly by the Colombian army. [34] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 13 [35] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, pages 14-17 [36] Mauricio Aranguren, page 99 [37] Mauricio Aranguren, page 99 [38] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 20 [39] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 19 [40] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, page 19 [41] Untitled 1989 Colombian Police (DAS) Intelligence “Secret” document, pages 20-21 [42] See, for instance, the Colombian Ministry of Environment or the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office positions relating to the aerial fumigation issue.  These ministries have continually and very publicly argued with the presidency, the army and the police, among others (http://usfumigation.org <http://usfumigation.org/>  ). [43] King of the Jungle, Tim McGirk, Time magazine, November 19, 2000 [44] DEA Intelligence Report 1993, obtained through the Freedom of information Act.  DEA Request Number 01-12152-F [45] Killing Pablo: The Life and Death of Pablo Escobar, Mark Bowden, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2001  Website (free version):http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/special_packages/killing_pablo/ [46] Mauricio Aranguren, page 110 [47] Colombia’s Other Army: Growing Paramilitary Force Wields Power With Brutality, Scott Wilson, Washington Post.  March 12, 2001 [48] King of the Jungle, Tim McGirk, Time magazine, Nov 19, 2000 [49] Inter-American Court on Human Rights, Organization of American States: “303. The paramilitary groups in Colombia have employed horrifying techniques of torture, including the use of chainsaws and other techniques to dismember their victims. For example, on February 21, 1996, in the community of Las Cañas, in the municipality of Turbo, Department of Antioquia, members of the ACCU paramilitary group tortured and then killed Edilma Ocampo and her daughter Stella Gil. The paramilitaries, some of whom wore hoods, arrived at the home of the victims at 10:30 a.m. Stella’s three children were present at the time. The paramilitary members tied the hands of the victims and told them that they would receive a special treatment, since they were guerrillas. The two women were taken out of the house approximately 100 meters and were beaten and decapitated in front of the three children. The victimizers then opened the stomachs of the victims, from the waist to the neck. They then placed Stella’s dead body on top of Edilma’s body and threatened the other residents of the community to leave the area or suffer the consequences. These actions obviously constitute acts of physical torture against those who are killed as well as psychological torture against those who are forced to witness these events and who are threatened with similar consequences.”http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Colom99en/chapter.4f.htm [50] Mauricio Aranguren, page 21 [51] Dead Man’s Bluff, Stephen Dudley, The Washington Post, Sunday, November 24, 2002 [52] Sharon Stevenson, personal communication, March, 2000 [53] Mauricio Aranguren, foto pages [54] La Conexión Mancuso-Marulanda, Cromos No. 4358, August 13, 2001 http://www.cromos.com/4358/actualidad4-1.htm [55]  Mancuso is Sicilian-born, holding dual Italian/Colombian citizenship.  La Conexión Mancuso-Marulanda, Cromos No. 4358, August 13, 2001http://www.cromos.com/4358/actualidad4-1.htm [56] Mauricio Aranguren, page 243 [57] Castaño meets Interior Minister, International Risk Circular, protection Concepts Corporation, November 7, 2000 http://www.psinternational.ca/sampleirc.doc [58] Negociación secreta Revista SEMANA, Bogotá – 25 de Nov-1 de Dic, 2002 [59] Colombia’s Paramilitaries Agree to Cease – Fire REUTERS Nov 24, 2002 [60] Nicaraguan Official Told U.S. Diplomat of Arms Deal That Later Went Bad, Filadelfo Alemán, AP, Monday, May 6, 2002 [61] Mauricio Aranguren, page 109 [62] Israeli Arms Dealers Differ Over Responsibility for Shipment to Colombian Paramilitaries, Juan Zamorano, AP, May 7, 2002. [63] ¿Quién es Álvaro Uribe Vélez? Rebelión website, April 10, 2002 http://www.rebelion.org/plancolombia/uribe100402.htm [64] http://www.geocities.com/manesvil/uribe.htm [65] Biografía no autorizada de Älvaro Uribe Vélez (El Señor de las Sombras), Joseph Contreras & Fernando Garavito, Editorial Oveja Negra, Bogotá, Colombia, 2002 [66] Ignacio Gomez, upon receiving Investigative Journalism Award 2002 from the Committee to protect Journalists.  © 2000-2002. International Center for Journalists. <http://www.libertad-prensa.org/copyright.html>  http://www.libertad-prensa.org/nacho.html Por el trabajo de los antecedentes que relacionan a Alvaro Uribe Vélez con el Cartel de Medellín. Es una investigación que se hizo en cinco partes. Una de ellas tenía que ver con la coincidencia cuando Pablo Escobar era miembro del Congreso y tenía muchísima actividad política o proselitista en los barrios pobres de Medellín, y por entonces Alvaro Uribe era el alcalde de Medellín y hacía programas muy paralelos a los de Pablo Escobar. Después Alvaro Uribe fue director de la Aeronáutica Civil. Antes de él, desde 1954 hasta 1981, el Estado había concedido 2.339 licencias, y durante los 18 meses que él ejerció, concedió 2.242 licencias, muy poco menos que en los 35 años anteriores, con el agravante que muchísimas de esas licencias, como 200, quedaron en manos del Cartel de Medellín. Y una de ellas, al menos una de ellas, quedó en manos de su papá, quien fue asesinado un tiempo después por las FARC. Cuando el helicóptero era objeto de la herencia, fue encontrado en un laboratorio famosísimo de Pablo Escobar llamado Tranquilandia. El helicóptero pertenecía a Uribe y su hermano. Además había una estrecha relación entre el papá de Uribe y el clan de los Ochoa, que era una familia muy importante en el Cartel de Medellín. Y la último fue cuando Pablo Escobar escapó de la cárcel y trató de hacer un nuevo acuerdo con el gobierno, y el encargado de llegar a ese acuerdo fue Alvaro Uribe Vélez. De todo esto nosotros teníamos cinco historias. Nosotros sólo alcanzamos publicar una, que es la relacionada con el helicóptero. Y el día que la publicamos el presidente se puso demasiado bravo, me insultó a mi por la radio, y comenzaron a presentarse llamadas misteriosas amenazando de muerte a la hija de dos años de Daniel Coronell, director de Noticias Uno, el programa donde trabajo yo ahora. Y se presentaron diversas presiones dentro de los otros socios del canal para que yo fuera expulsado. Entonces la serie se suspendió, no se emitió. [67] Biografía no autorizada de Älvaro Uribe Vélez (El Señor de las Sombras), Joseph Contreras & Fernando Garavito, Editorial Oveja Negra, Bogotá, Colombia, 2002 [68] Colombian Labyrinth: The Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and Its Implications for Regional Stability Angel Rabasa, Peter Chalk RAND, 2001 http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1339/MR1339.ch5.pdf [69] Colombia: Paramilitares legalizados,  Rebelión website, Sept 9, 2002 http://www.rebelion.org/plancolombia/sodepaz090902.htm [70] Personal communication, Charlie Roberts, Colombia Human Rights Commission, 11/02/02 [71] Comisión Colombiana de Juristas as cited in Colombia Update Vol 13. No1 Colombia Human Rights Network, fall 2001.  According to the Comisión’s report on 1997, 67% of assassinations were attributed to the paramilitaries; 20% to the guerrillas; and 3% to state agents – for the cases where the perpetrators were known.  According to their March 2001 Report,  “87.21 entail state responsibility”.  It should be noted that the Comisión considers the paramilitaries to be under the “state responsibility” rubric because of their thinly-disguised ties to the Colombian Army. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=2706

Israeli Lobby To Twist American Congress In Armenia’s Direction

Jewish lobby could take the side of the Armenians: Milliyet

According to Ermenihaber, Turkish Milliyet referred to the US State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Yerevan visit. Analyst Sami Kohen makes a remark that the rapprochement with Armenia is “in the fridge” in the Turkish foreign policy with “very hot” issues all around it.

By the time the Turkish media is all flooded by photos and materials on Clinton’s visit to the Armenian genocide memorial and museum, Kohen reminds that Armenian-Turkish protocols were signed last year, due to which diplomatic relations could be established, the border could be opened, dialogue mechanisms over historical issues could be worked out. However, as Milliyet writes, Ankara gave in to Baku countereffects and put forth Nagorno-Karabakh as a precondition, thus, making a path for freezing the protocols.

“At first sight, it seems it could not harm Turkey any way. Of course, currently it can’t. But, to be frank, Washington is already sending bad signals. The US Congress will again discuss the Armenian Genocide Resolution. The hazard that came up last time, could be even more serious this time,” the Tukish analyst writes, mentioning two reasons for the alert.

1. Angry with Turkey, the Jewish lobby could take the side of the Armenians.

2. The US is getting ready for the Congress elections in November.

The columnist doesn’t think Clinton’s words on hailing Armenia’s efforts to call the protocols to life and that the “ball” is in Turkey’s field and it’s Turkey’s turn to act, came accidentally in Yerevan. Sami Kohen says Clinton addressed a second “message” to Turkey by visiting genocide memorial in Tsitsernakaberd. The source highlights that though the US Embassy in Armenia said the visit was private, the wreath had a writing on it: the US Secretary of State. According to Kohen, thus, the US diplomacy tried to please Armenia and the Armenians of America.

To sum up, Kohen notes that the light for Karabakh settlement is not visible in the horizon either, and as long as Ankara links rapprochement with Armenia to Karabakh issue, the Armenian-Turkish normalization will yet remain frozen for a long time.

Whitewashing the Pollard Spy Ring

Israeli spy in U.S. part of ‘rogue operation’

J.J. Green, wtop.com

Jonathan Pollard, once thought to have been an Israeli spy, may have been part of a rogue operation. (AP)

WASHINGTON – Twenty-five years after his arrest, the truth about for whom Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard was working is still in doubt.

The former civilian intelligence analyst, sentenced to life in prison on charges of spying on the U.S. in 1987, was allegedly not working for official Israeli intelligence, as previously thought.

Responding to concerns that Israel is spying on the U.S., Israel’s ambassador Michael Oren told WTOP, “Israel does not, does not, I stress, collect information on the United States.”

When pushed during an interview about Pollard’s case, Oren responded, “Jonathan Pollard occurred in the mid-1980s. Now, we’re talking about an event that was run by a rogue organization in the Israeli intelligence community. That was, what, 25 years ago?”

His remarks, a departure from an official Israeli statement in the late 1990s, have stunned many in the Washington intelligence community.

“It does surprise me,” says Paul Pillar, former Central Intelligence Agency National Intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.

“It never crossed my mind and never heard any suggestion that it was anything other than an official operation,” Pillar says.

“It is, however, in Israel’s interests, as defined by them, to obtain as much information as possible of the kind Pollard was collecting.”

Pollard‘s own stinging rebukes of the Israeli government in a number of April 1998 letters seemed to confirm his official status.

“I did not spend 13 years in prison in order to endorse a lie,” Pollard wrote. “The truth must come out, so that I may be freed. The truth is simple and clear: I was an Israeli agent employed by the LAKAM branch of intelligence in an operation that was fully sanctioned by the government of Israel. Anything less than that is a distortion of the truth that is counterproductive to the goal of securing my release.”

A little more than a month later, on May 11, 1998, the Israeli government released a statement confirming Pollard’s claims. The government’s statement said, “Jonathan Pollard was an Israeli agent handled by high ranking Israeli officials in an authorized Israeli bureau, LAKAM.”

Worry that Pollard’s theft of U.S. Navy secrets may have been part of a rogue operation has generated concern among some in the U.S. intelligence community, that there may be other “rogue” operations underway to collect U.S. intelligence.

Israel admittedly runs robust intelligence operations throughout the Middle East because of concerns about hostile governments and organizations that have targeted the small Mediterranean country which 7.5 million people call home. Hamas and Hezbollah are among the key targets.

“We’ve been hampered by the fact our forces left Lebanon in 2000 and left Gaza in 2005, so we actually don’t have forces on ground, so we rely on human intelligence and electronic intelligence and surveillance from the skies, but it’s not perfect,” says Oren.

Their operations may not be perfect, but according to a Web site run by the political wing of Hamas, Israel is running a very refined network of spies.

The site, Al-Majd, claims some of the “veteran and experienced collaborators” were equipped with sophisticated beacon devices during the 2008 war that transmitted their positions to Israeli intelligence. According to the site, the beacons protected them from missile strikes.

While the Israeli government will not comment on the depth of its intelligence capabilities, Fred Burton, a former U.S. State Department Counterterrorism agent, says Israel has extremely capable intelligence services laser-focused on the Iranian nuclear threat.

“(Israeli intelligence is) the best in the world on Hezbollah and Iranian targets, but lacking the money and resources intelligence organizations like the CIA have.” Burton says. “They seem to do more with less than many others. They are extremely good on HUMINT (Human Intelligence) collection.”

Israel’s enemies extend into the U.S. According to U.S. Department of Justice documents, numerous individuals have been arrested and prosecuted on charges of providing material support to Hezbollah and Hamas, sworn enemies of Israel.  Some U.S. intelligence officials are quietly skeptical of Israel’s declaration that it doesn’t spy on the U.S.

“We share information on Islamic extremists groups with American intelligence,” Oren says. “We’re not collecting on them in the United States, but we rely on information given to us by American intelligence agencies and we are again in very close communication and cooperation with them.”

A U.S. official responded saying, “The Israelis are very good at intelligence work — they always have been. They’re not afraid to tell you what they think and why. And their strategic interests tend to dovetail with ours. They’re valuable partners. We deal with them as they deal with us: With sharp minds and open eyes. Intelligence is no place for the naïve or gullible.”

According to a former Shin Bet officer, the Pollard case planted a seed that has sprouted and continues to grow despite efforts to allegedly eradicate it.

“These guys had some kind of impression that the U.S. was hiding intelligence from the Israeli government in this particular subject (the Palestinian Liberation Organization), so they decided to run the operation, never stopping to think about the damage they were causing the Jewish Community inside the United States,” says the former officer.

The political dance around Jonathan Pollard’s case continues. The U.S. has refused to release Pollard despite the close relationship with Israel and despite that Pollard is said to be part of a “rogue operation.”

“We would certainly welcome his release,” Oren says.

Mossad/CIA Implicated In a Coup Plot In Turkey

Mossad implicated in a coup plot in Turkey, a NATO country; CIA fingerprints also found on attempt By Wayne Madsen Online Journal Contributing Writer Dec 4, 2008, 00:20

(WMR) – Fresh from revelations, reported by WMR, that Israel’s Mossad and Chabad House-based criminal syndicates were targets in a criminal gangland retribution attack by a notorious Muslim gang in Mumbai, comes word that Mossad has, once again, been implicated in an intelligence and criminal network, this time in Turkey.

What makes this latest example of Israel’s failure to stem the criminal activities of its intelligence service and criminal syndicates worse is that Turkey, unlike Israel, is a NATO ally of the United States and, therefore, the United States is bound by treaty to protect NATO allies from aggression by non-NATO states, including Israel.

The Turkish and other Middle East media are reporting that the Mossad has been fingered in connection with a right-wing Turkish criminal and intelligence gang, known as Ergenekon, that stands accused of attempting to overthrow Turkey’s democratically-elected Justice and Development (AKP) Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. Several Turkish papers have named a Turkish rabbi, Tuncay Guney, aka Daniel T. Guney and Daniel Levi and code-named “Ipek” or “Silk,” as having served as a double agent for the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) tasked with infiltrating the shadowy but powerful “state within a state” group Ergenekon. Guney had been arrested by Turkish authorities in 2001 for distributing fake drivers’ licenses and phony license plates for luxury cars. A document recently uncovered by the Turkish press revealed that Guney had also infiltrated a police intelligence unit (JITEM) working with Ergenekon to destabilize Turkey. Guney was exfiltrated to the United States and he now heads up the B’nai Yaakov Synagogue and Community Center in Toronto, Canada. Guney has denied that he has been an agent for Israel, Turkey or the United States but the MIT has confirmed the document identifying Guney as an agent for MIT is authentic.

The Turkish daily Hurriyethas reported that Guney served in MIT’s Counter-terrorism Unit (CTU) and in the MIT unit that monitors Iran. Hurriyet also reported that Guney had developed a contact at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Muhsin Karger, the consulate’s political affairs undersecretary.

Guney also has claimed to be a journalist and it is also alleged that he was a member of the PKK. Silvyo Ovaydo, the leader of the Turkish Jewish community, called Guney a fraudulent rabbi and said he was not even registered as a rabbi at the B’nai Yaakov synagogue in Toronto. Guney is said to have once worked for Islamist media organizations in Turkey but suddenly converted to Judaism and became an “instant rabbi” in Toronto.

At the heart of the Ergenekon story lies Mossad and its reported attempts to turn Turkey into another Lebanon or West Bank/Gaza, a country wracked by internal strife and constant warfare that would usher into power a strong right-wing military dictatorship. In the trial of one of the accused murderers of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the lawyer for one of the accused murderers asked another accused murderer, Erhan Tuncel, a one-time police informer like Guney, if he had an Israeli girlfriend. Tuncel refused to answer the question, citing an invasion of his privacy. However, it was clear that what the lawyer was driving at was a Mossad connection to the murder of Dink, a murder that was being pinned on Turkish anti-Armenian nationalists by the corporate and heavyily Israeli Lobby-influenced media in the West.

When 89 suspects were named in a 2,455-page indictment by a criminal court in Istanbul last July, many retired Turkish army officers, the neocon network, especially in Washington, which is their major citadel, along with Jerusalem and London, began to throw cold water and the term “conspiracy theory” around charges in the Turkish indictment that Ergenekon played a major role in the formation of several Turkish terrorist groups to disrupt Turkish politics, including the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish Hizbollah (Party of God), the Marxist-Leninist People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), and the little-known Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C). The neocon Jamestown Foundation in Washington called the indictment’s links between Turkish military elements and radical terrorists a “conspiracy theory.” Organizations like Jamestown have no other choice. If it were also proven, as it was in Turkey, that various terrorist groups like “Al Qaeda,” “Deccan Mujaheddin,” and others exist courtesy of the nurturing and support by American, Israeli, and other Western military-intelligence structures, groups like Jamestown would lose their reasons for existence — to make propaganda and receive funding in order to keep the terrorist bogeymen, the actual “Emmanuel Godsteins,” alive.

Guney is reported to be the 86th suspect in the indictment of Ergenekon. Guney is believed to have revealed the initial detailed information on the existence of Ergenekon in order to avoid being charged in the case.

The involvement of extreme right-wing Turkish military and intelligence officials and Turkish organized crime networks, with Mossad and, possibly, CIA agents acting in concert with a suspected CIA-funded Turkish Islamic charismatic madrassaand Islamic centers’ chief named Fethullah Gulen — whose activities parallel pan-Turkic/Eurasianist (re: George Soros) goals of Ergenekon — is similar to the scenario now playing out in India where a little known group called “Deccan Mujaheddin” may have been created as a ruse by Indian right-wing military and intelligence officers, allied with Mossad and CIA agents, to sow discord in India and bring about a right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena Hindu government.

Gulen owns a number of media and business interests in Turkey and runs Islamic centers throughout central Asia and even in Russia.

In polls, some one-third of the Turkish public believe Islamist Nurcu sect charismatic leader Grand Hodja Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, is part of a movement that aims to seize control of the Turkish state and a little over a third believe that Gulen is funded by “international powers.” After he was acquitted in Turkey of attempting to overthrow the secular state with his religious organization, Gulen was first denied a Permanent Resident Card or “Green Card” to remain in the United States by the U.S. Distrrict Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but then an appeals court granted Gulen a Green Card. In October of this year, a federal appellate court found that U.S. immigration authorities improperly rejected Gulen’s request for a Green Card. The appeals court ruled that Gulen was “an alien of extraordinary ability,” a decision that saw approval of Gulen’s residency status. Observers of the case suspect the CIA intervened with the court on Gulen’s behalf. Gulen’s support for the AKP government may be an insurance policy by the CIA to maintain a close relationship with the “Islamist tendency” AKP government in Ankara. The Bush administration, after seven years of trying to deport Gulen to Turkey, suddenly dropped its opposition to his permanent residency status.

The public prosecutor in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) case against Gulen’s permanent residency status argued in filed documents that Gulen’s movement was financially supported by Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Turkish government, and the “Central Intelligence Agency.” The deposition stated that some Ankara businessmen donated up to 70 percent of their income to Gulen’s movement.

If Gulen’s operations are funded by the CIA that means the “Agency” may be linked to Ergenekon. With the U.S. having a mutual defense treaty with Turkey’s recognized government that puts the CIA potentially in violation of U.S. law. And Israel’s connections with Ergenekon means that the United States is bound by treaty to protect its ally Turkey from Israeli covert or overt aggression.

There is an element of “McCarthyism” in the Ergenekon case. Some well-meaning officials have been subjected to being tainted by the broad brush of being associated with Ergenekon. One is Asil Serdar Sacan, the former head of the Istanbul organized crime department, who was the first to confiscate documents on Ergenekon in 2001 and broadened his investigation to include both Ergenekon and the Gulen organization. Sacan, who investigated the murder of Turkey’s “King of Casinos” Omer Lutfu Topol, successfully beat attempts to smear him, being acquitted of 36 criminal charges brought against him and being reinstated six times to his police position. Sacan is currently in jail as an Ergenekon suspect but his only “crime” appears to have exposed Guney as a possible triple agent for the MIT, Mossad, and CIA. In 2001, Guney was spirited out of Turkey thanks to an agreement between MIT’s undersecretary Senkal Atasagun and the CIA. Guney was given a 10-year U.S. visa thanks to the CIA’s intervention.

In fact, Ergenekon and its “deep state” players in Turkey and Shiv Sena and its extremist Hindu “deep state” allies in India, backed by elements of Mossad and the CIA, appears to be a replay of the CIA’s secret “Gladio” network in Europe that placed weapons caches in the hands of fascists and neo-Nazis groups to take up arms in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

The use of “false flag” terrorist attacks in Western Europe by Gladio units were blamed on Communists in an effort to forestall Communist-Socialist coalition governments in Western Europe, particularly in Italy and France.

Similarly, Ergenekon stands accused of inciting conflicts between Turks and Kurds to create anarchy in the country with the aim of having Ergenekon seizing control of the Turkish government and re-cementing close ties with the United States and Israel.

In 2004, Ergenekon attempted three military coups against the AKP government. They were code-named Eldiven (The Glove”), Sarikiz (“The Blond Girl”), and Ayisigi (“Moonlight’).

Ergenekon has been cagily kept off the newspaper pages and TV news screens in the United States. To investigate Ergenekon and Gulen in Turkey is to peel away at an onion that could expose some other “unpleasantness” for certain quarters.

On January 10, 2007, WMR reported: “According to Federal law enforcement sources, two influential businessmen — Turkish Sunni Muslim Fetullahci charismatic leader Fetullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania after being acquitted in Turkey in 2006 of plotting against the secular republic, and Saudi BMI Islamic investment chief investor Yasin Qadi, a major investor in Turkey who was named in October 2001 by President Bush as a Special Designated Global Terrorist — were both involved with the CIA in the late 1990s in funneling weapons and other support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an Albanian terrorist group operating in the former Yugoslavia. The KLA was allied with the Clinton administration and supported by leading neocons such as Richard Perle, whose lobbying firm, International Advisers, Inc., counts Turkey as its major client. Gulen’s books have been translated into Albanian. BMI’s founder, Soliman Biheiri, also helped to start PTech, a Braintree, Massachusetts-based firm that had active software contracts with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Pentagon on 9/11. PTech’s offices were raided by federal authorities in December 2002 after it came under suspicion for terrorist financing. Qadi is suspected of using a series of northern Virginia-based businesses and charities to fund ‘Al Qaeda’ activities in Bosnia. Osama Bin Laden was granted a special passport by the Bosnian government in 1993. Qadi was reportedly a business partner of Turkish businessman Cuneyd Zapsu, an adviser to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP).”

The dramatic revelations about Ergenekon coming out of Turkey also points to the reasons why the neocons in Washington were keen to stymie the work of FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds and the CIA’s non-official cover agent Valerie Plame Wilson, both of whom had smuggling and other activities in Turkey high on their priority lists. On January 18, 2008, WMR reported: “WMR has learned that former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert status was leaked by the Bush White House, and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was focused on a major covert network involving Turkish, Israeli, and key members of the Bush administration and Republican Party and weapons and drug smuggling, were essentially looking at the same network. The nexus of Turkey with both the covert CIA Brewster Jennings and Associates operations and the Turkish-Israeli network of influence active within the Defense and State Departments, is the key factor in understanding the complicated counter-espionage operation conducted by both the FBI and CIA.” It now appears that the Washington-connected criminal network being looked at by Edmonds and Plame was, in fact, closely linked to the Ergenekon network in Turkey.

WMR’s January 18, 2008 report continued: “Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was also, according to our sources, well aware of the massive conspiracy to cover-up the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction components from former Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Ukraine, Moldova, and Ukraine, to the international weapons bazaar. The Abdul Qadeer Khan (A Q Khan) network based in Pakistan was a major beneficiary of the weapons smuggling operation that used Turkey as a pass-through. Rather than expand his investigation, Fitzgerald demurred on looking at the activities of the American Turkish Council, Turkey’s influential lobbying group in Washington, and its parallel symbiotic organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Turkey and Israel are close military and intelligence partners.”

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has called on President-elect Barack Obama to reappoint Fitzgerald as U.S. Attorney for Northern Ilinois. If Obama does so, it means that the network being investigated by Edmonds and Plame, one that stretches to Ergenekon and the Gulen network in Turkey, has its hooks deep into the future Obama administration.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Turkey’s Trouble and the “Hidden Hand” of History

[The strangeness of modern day Turkey, as seen in the Kemalist legacy of democratic reforms, secularism, intersecting East and West, "moderate Islam,"--all of these reflect the movement of history in the direction of human liberation, but within this progress  you also see evidence of the creeping "hidden hand" of history's secret manipulators.  With each stride forward, for any segment of the human race, comes the companion shadow step of the secret power center, looking for ways to limit the liberation and to steer the moving popular force ("movement") in an unnatural alternate direction.  In Turkey's case, the covert herders of the movement have undermined the Nation from within, using groups like the "Young Turks" and the PKK to attack progress and create national divisions in order to multiply the anger and hatred.  Many of the Young Turks were "crypto-Jews," Turkish Jews who hid their identities and secretly worked in support of a hidden anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish agenda.  In present-day Turkey, the PKK is much more than merely a Kurdish liberation group, it is also the tool used by the hidden hand to serve the cause of the "Jewish state," while disrupting the Nation and multiplying the divisions.  The PKK advances the Israeli cause in Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Today, the Israeli-backed PKK has been activated in a new offensive which has already claimed the lives of many Turkish troops.  This new offensive by Israel's surrogates is timed simultaneously with the international effort to break the Gaza seige, which turned into a contest between Israel and Turkey with the flotilla attack.  The next planned international incident has already been set into motion from Lebanon and in the Red Sea against Israel's primary enemy, Iran.

There is another covert operation connected to the Israeli Mossad now unfolding in Turkey as well, the "Ergenekon Plot." This is a plot by right-wing Turkish generals, with uncovered connections to the Israeli Mossad, to incite "Islamic" terrorism and cause a return to a military dictatorship.  The exposure of this network, with its connections to Mossad, as well as its secret ties to the American "Stay Behind" "Deep State" network ("Gladio"), represents as Turkey's last chance to save itself from the hidden forces pushing instability and military dictatorship.

Most of Turkey's ongoing troubles are not of its own making.]

Turkey’s trouble

Arab News

The upsurge in fighting between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdish rebel PKK is a serious setback for the efforts of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to bring an end to the long-standing conflict.

Ten Turkish soldiers were killed in an attack on a fort near the Iraqi border. In response the military sent warplanes and helicopter gun ships to attack PKK bases in Iraq. There is every sign the conflict is once again escalating.

The PKK abandoned a yearlong unilateral cease-fire in March and have since been mounting roadside bomb attacks on army convoys and killing local Kurdish militiamen and village guards. The army is rushing reinforcements to the region and says that it is expecting the PKK to increase its attacks during this summer.

War-weary Turks of all ethnic backgrounds will be in despair that this so-called dirty war has once more flared up. The tragic truth is that they have been here so many times before. This bitter 20-year conflict which has cost in excess of 40,000 lives is un-winnable by either side. With their Iraqi refuges, the PKK will always be able to escape across the border and regroup. Meanwhile, the Turkish military are tough and indomitable. They are unlikely to be deflected by the losses they are suffering.

Indeed there are some in Turkey who suspect their country’s top brass actually welcome the Kurdish insurrection. It ensures that the largely conscript armed forces are given generous portions of the state budget so they are well equipped to fight the PKK. Basic training for army recruits remains little changed from when it was introduced by Prussian officers at the start of the twentieth century. Military service is seen as part of the creation of good Turkish citizens. Typically recruits from the east of the country do their military service in the west and vice versa. As its past political interventions have shown, Turkey’s generals consider themselves to be the custodians of the Kemalist republican flame.

For them therefore the PKK insurrection rates as more than a rebellion but as a challenge to the homogeneity of the country that Kemal Ataturk created. There is resentment among nationalist politicians as well as senior commanders at the way in which the Erdogan government has sought to accommodate Kurdish demands for greater rights for their language and culture.

Therefore it could be feared that beyond welcoming the fighting with the PKK, individual officers may even be fostering it.  Were this true, it would be an extremely serious situation. Soldiers should implement the policies of the elected government, not their own agenda. Yet in the bad lands of eastern Turkey where the fighting is taking place, it is hard for Ankara politicians to know what is actually going on.

The violence will only be ended by negotiation and compromise. The Erdogan administration recognizes this but there remains a core of nationalists who regard an accommodation with the Kurds as a betrayal. If their view prevails, then blood will continue to flow.

US Still Faithfully Following Israeli Precedents–Planning Massive Retaliation On Pakistan for Next Terror Attack

[Obama remains true to patterns set by Ariel Sharon and Bush (SEE:  Operation "Justified Vengeance").  Instead of making sound preparations before any attack, taking "fool-proof" measures to prevent a real terrorist attack, Obama, like Sharon and Bush before him, is preparing massive retaliation against our ally Pakistan for the day after the next terror attack.  This is similar to the reported order given by Cheney to prepare massive retaliation against Iran for any new attack by anyone.  Like Israel, it is not enough for our cold-blooded military leaders to simply lie in wait for justification for the next aggression; we must take steps to cause the anticipated justifying attack.  Where Ariel Sharon chose to take IDF troops and sashay into the Temple Mount, to generate the requisite justifying attack, Obama has announced to the Taliban what they must do to bring US troops into Pakistan, just carry-out one successful attack in America--that's it.

Is this because the Zionists really do control US military policy, or merely infatuation with Israel's bloodthirsty ways?]

U.S. studies options for possible Pakistan attack: report

WASHINGTON

(Reuters) – U.S. military leaders are reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan if there is a successful attack on American soil tied to the country’s tribal areas, The Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition.

The newspaper said senior U.S. military officials stressed a possible strike would only be considered under extreme circumstances such as a catastrophic attack that convinced President Barack Obama that the campaign using CIA drone strikes is not working.

The officials said airstrikes would be the most effective option in reducing the threat posed by al-Qaeda and other groups, but the United States must be careful not to damage its military relationship with Pakistan to a point where it cannot be repaired.

CIA-operated drones have targeted Taliban figures in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the group has vowed to avenge missile strikes that have killed some of its leaders.

The failed Times Square bombing on May 1 has revived international fears about Pakistan, a U.S. ally in the campaign against militancy. It also has forced the Obama administration to review how it would respond to a successful attack on U.S. soil.

U.S. authorities say Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, has admitted to the Times Square bomb attempt and has been cooperating with investigators since his arrest on May 3.

American and Pakistani authorities are likely scrambling for clues on whether those detained have ties to militants in Pakistan, who are bent on toppling the state and are violently opposed to the U.S. presence.

In the Beginning and the Now of Nakba

eileen fleming Every May 15th since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Palestinian Exodus from the Holy Land, known as Nakba, meaning their “day of the catastrophe” is commemorated as the day the expulsions and flight of Palestinians from their towns and villages began when Israeli troops forced them from their land and created over 750,000 refugees who are still denied the right to return to their property. Dr. Pappe, an Israeli historian and author of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, spoke in occupied East Jerusalem, 0n Nov. 8, 2006 at the Notre Dame Conference center during Sabeel’s 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful: Palestinian Christians. His topic was the “Dynamics of Forgetting” but he informed us: “On March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.” “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20′s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name. “The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened. “From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a CRIME against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine. “Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media. “To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship. “In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals! “But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology. “Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this. “The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH! The way to challenge and change the ethnic cleansing is to pursue true democracy and the use of sanctions and divestment, for money talks.” Palestinian Loss of Land 1946 to 2005 Israel has also never been a Democracy! In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained: “The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.” Jeff Halper, American Israeli, co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Professor of Anthropology, explains: “An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a county actually ‘belongs.’”[1] In a 2005 interview with Jeff Halper, he informed this reporter: “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.” The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law and very foundation and source of legal authority that underlies the very existence of these United States and the federal government. The US Constitution provides the framework for the organization of the federal government and under pins the relationship of the federal government to the states and all its citizens/people within these United States. Jeff Halper hit another nail on the head when he wrote that the “entire conflict with the Palestinians has been reduced to one consideration: personal security…Israeli Jews prefer peace and compromise, but only if they are convinced that their prime preoccupation-security- has been credibly addressed.”[2] So, let’s address it, for the brutal truth is that only if we truly love our friends will we be honest with them and call them on their bad behavior. We also must be honest with ourselves about our culpability! “Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”[3] Just before Christmas 2010, President Obama, signed into law the biggest aid pledge of the year. NOT for struggling countries on the World Bank’s list, not for we the people without health care, but another $3 billion for Israel in 2010 and an extra $30 billion over the next decade! Jeff Halper also told me: “Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. What gives us hope is that as this conflict worsens maybe Europe will figure out that American policies are against their interests and intervene…This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA. “If we do fix this conflict it would be a tremendous step forward in global reconciliation…This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention. “It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. “In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa! The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives. “Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side. “Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.” [4] In his book, Later Years Albert Einstein, wrote: “This is a time when there seems to be a particular need for men of philosophical persuasion—that is to say, friends of wisdom and truth—to join together…We Jews should be, and remain, the carriers and patrons of spiritual values. But we should also always be aware of the fact that these spiritual values are and always have been the common goal of mankind.” William Blake wrote that “Opposition is True Friendship” and after 62 years of Al Nakba; enough is more than enough! LEARN MORE:  THE Ongoing NAKBA Read more… 1. Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Page 74. Pluto Press, 2008 2. An Israeli in Palestine, Pages 65-66. 3. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” 4. Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory

Hey Elton: Don’t Go Breaking Our Hearts

eileen fleming

Palestinian civil society has called on Elton John to respect their boycott call and cancel his June 17th concert in Tel Aviv. If he does, he’ll be joining Santana and Gil-Scott Heron, who recently canceled their spring concerts in Israel. Bob Dylan was scheduled to play Tel Aviv on May 27, 2010, but as of this writing that date is no longer posted on his tour schedule.

This video suggests six reasons why Elton, Elvis Costello and all artists with integrity should join the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

Hey Elton

more about “The WALL OF Hate“, posted with vodpod

In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that The Wall is a violation of International Law because it cuts through the West Bank appropriating Palestinian land and destroying Palestinian villages and economy to make way for further Israeli settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

The following nine categories make up the necessary, sufficient, and defining characteristics of apartheid regimes:

1. Violence: Apartheid is a state of war initiated by a de facto invading ethnic minority, which at least in the short term originates from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of apartheid most if not all members of the invading group originate from a different continent. The invading ethnic minority and its self-defined descendants then continue to dominate the indigenous majority by means of their military superiority and by their continuous threats and uses of violence.

2. Repopulation: Apartheid is also a continuation of depopulation and population transfer. One example is seen in the obliteration of the indigenous Bedouins that Israel denies free movement to graze their herds and are silently transferring the Bedouins to new locales, such as atop of garbage dumps.

3. Citizenship: The indigenous people are often denied citizenship in their own country by the apartheid state authorities, which are ironically and irrationally, run and staffed by the recent arrivals to the country.

4. Land: Apartheid entails land confiscation, land redistribution and forced removals, almost without exception to the benefit of the invading ethnic minority. Usually, members of the ethnic majority are forced on to barren and unfertile soils, where they must also try to survive under impoverished and overcrowded conditions.

5. Work: Apartheid displays systematic exploitation of the indigenous class in the production process and different pay or taxation for the same work.

6. Access: There is ethnically differentiated access to employment, food, water, health care, emergency services, clean air, and other needs, including the need for leisure activities, in each case ensuring superior access for the favored ethnic community.

7. Education: There are also different kinds of education offered and forced upon the different ethnic groups.

8. Language: A basic apartheid characteristic is the fact that only very few of the invaders and their descendants ever learn the language(s) of the indigenous victims.

9. Thought: Finally, apartheid contains ideologies or ‘necessary illusions’ in order to convince the privileged minorities that they are inherently superior and the indigenous majorities that they are inherently inferior. Much of apartheid thought is shaped by typical war propaganda. The enemy is dehumanized by both sides’ ideologies, words and other symbols are used to incite or provoke people to violence, but mostly so by the invaders and their descendants. [1]

After returning from Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Intelligence in South African Government wrote how it was “like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger…A journey from one West Bank town to another that could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians, with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers…The monstrous apartheid wall cuts off East Jerusalem…Bethlehem too is totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ’s birthplace.” [2]

The Wall is spun as a ‘security barrier’ but it “is designed to crush the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettos. Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol roads and alarm systems. It will be 700km long and, at a height of 8m to 9m in places, dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the barrier becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish settlements — some of which are huge towns — and annexes more and more Palestinian territory.” [Ibid]

“It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers.”- Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad. [Ibid]

“The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison…roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa.” [Ibid]

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa’s Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian: “I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

Justice requires equal human rights, liberty and self-determination for all people. Justice requires honoring International Law and the Declaration of Human Rights. Palestinian civil society has been calling for NONVIOLENT actions against Israel until they change their bad behavior and as money is the currency with the loudest voice: BDS: Boycott, Divest and Sanction is the way for people of conscience to do something.

LEARN MORE:
http://www.pacbi.org/
1. Paraphrased from pages 71-73, Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77..
2. Mail & Guardian, Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid, by Ronnie Kasrils.  http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=308966&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/
Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine

Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com

Algerians and Moroccans in El Qaida training camps in Israel

ennahar

According to sources well informed on the case and the activities of El Qaeda, Israel would have created about a year, training camps on its territory for elements from Arab countries.

• The military training and intelligence are provided in preparation for possible terrorist operations against the interests of foreign countries in the Arab countries who are regarded by Israel as a threat to its security and its strategic interests, including the Maghreb Arab.

  According to our sources, the camps include Arabs from Algeria, Morocco and Yemen who came in, with false passports, from Europe and carrying Jewish names. These were recruited by the Mossad in the European capitals to activate within the ‘El Qaeda’ organization after being selected by the intelligence services in Europe. These people are generally wanted for belonging to terrorist groups.

  The secret training camps have relations with the sleeping cells of El Qaida in Europe, where their elements are recruited for possible terrorist operations in Arab countries in coordination with the branches of the organization including the armed terrorist groups of the Sahara. This proves what Ennahar had previously published on the military attaché at the Israeli embassy in Mauritania, who had prepared a secret report on security activities of armed men in the Sahara regions. The latter maintained secret relations with the rebel movements in Mali and Niger.

  The Mossad had relations with the branches of El Qaeda and the operations committed against foreign interests, mainly American, and in connection with the events in Iraq and the Middle East.

  According to these sources, the Mossad might even try to use Algerian Harraga in Italy and recruit them in these training camps across the logistics network of seafarers on the axis Sardinia Naples in search of elements to send secretly in Israel, for the purpose of committing operations against foreign interests during the summer; operations to be awarded to El Qaeda.

  This new stage in the activities of the El Qaeda organization is the subject of the discourse of El Dhawahiri in an attempt to revive the various branches after the stranglehold exercised on the organization by the European intelligence and painful strikes made by the security services and the army in particular in the Arab Maghreb and in Algeria.

  Ennahar / Mohamed Ben Kemoukh

IDF Order Authorizes Mass Deportations of Thousands From West Bank

IDF bid to expel West Bank Palestinians is a step too far

By Haaretz Editorial

A new military order will take effect this week, enabling the army to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and prosecute them on infiltration charges, which carry long prison terms. The order, uncovered by Amira Hass in Haaretz yesterday, bears the signature of Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni in his previous capacity as commander of the Israel Defense Forces in Judea and Samaria. The order’s vague language will allow army officers to exploit it arbitrarily to carry out mass expulsions, in accordance with military orders which were issued under unclear circumstances. The first candidates for expulsion will be people whose ID cards bear addresses in the Gaza Strip, including children born in the West Bank and Palestinians living in the West Bank who have lost their residency status for various reasons. This would be a grave and dangerous move, unprecedented during the Israeli occupation. For years, Israel has used a heavy hand against the Palestinian population registry, trampling basic human rights such as the freedom to move one’s residence within the occupied territories. Many Palestinians’ lives have thus been made very difficult because they have been cut off from their previous places of residence without being able to return or legally register their new addresses. Advertisement The right of all Palestinians to choose where to live in the West Bank or Gaza marks a very low threshold for defining their human rights. Israel, which justifiably prevents Palestinians from returning to where they lived before 1948 and does not offer them fair compensation for their property (while enabling Jews to recover property from the same period, as has happened in Sheikh Jarrah), cannot expel Palestinians from the occupied territories on the basis of dubious bureaucratic claims. Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel’s aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank. While all Jews can settle wherever they wish, in Israel or in the territories, Israel is trying to deprive the Palestinians of even the minimal right to choose where to live in the West Bank or Gaza. The prime minister and defense minister should immediately shelve this military order before the IDF feels free to begin carrying out expulsions.

If Netanyahu’s Embarrassing Moment Caused Obama to Grow a Pair–

[Imagine]

A Highway For Peace

William John Cox

The latest flap over Israeli housing construction in East Jerusalem has caused me to reflect upon the very deep and complicated feelings I have about the city.

I first passed through Jerusalem in December 1979 in an attempt to sneak into Tehran shortly after the American embassy hostages were taken. I returned two years later following the favorable verdict in the Holocaust Denial case and shared morning tea with Prime Minister Begin. In 1992, I testified in a trial there about the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls and refused to identify my secret client. My last visit was in 2000 when my wife and I were married at Christ Church in the Old City on Valentine’s Day.

The political issue is not who has the greatest property rights in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nor, is it whether the Palestinian people are more genetically related to the ancient Israelis who occupied Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, than are the Ashkenazi Jews who now control the Israeli government and who exercise great influence over U.S. policy.

The critical question is: “what can be done to peacefully resolve the dispute in a way that protects the political rights and ensures the operational and economic security of the Israeli and Palestinian people and which removes the United States as a target for terrorists?”

Rather than answering with a complicated policy paper, let me share a simple vision I have experienced over the years.

First, accept that the nation of Israel is politically, economically, and militarily capable of defending its own interests on the world stage and that it has the right to be free of internal terrorists attacks.

Second, imagine that the United Nations imposes a 50-year protectorate over the land of Palestine, including Gaza, as it existed prior to the 1967 war and declared the area to be a duty-free economic zone, with security and freedom of access guaranteed by the U.N.

This is the vision:

Instead of the existing concrete wall, I imagine a modern freeway extending from Gaza through Hebron, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, Jericho and north along the 1967 West Bank border through the Golan Heights to the Syrian and Lebanese borders and terminating at the Mediterranean Sea.

Like all freeways, I imagine that the highway (border) is fenced and that it is patrolled and controlled by three-person motorized teams consisting of a non-Arab UN police supervisor, an Israeli police officer and a Palestinian police officer.

I imagine that the protectorate police force is only armed with non-military weapons, that all members are highly trained professionals, and that the protectorate provides economic and physical security to all of its inhabitants, both Palestinians and Jews, from its administrative headquarters in East Jerusalem.

I imagine that the highway serves as a conduit for free trade and tourism and that it promotes the economic interests of both Israel and Palestine.

I imagine that after living in peace for 50 years, the right of Israel to exist will be accepted by all nations in the Middle East, that the United States and the United Nations are perceived to have acted even-handedly in the matter, and that the “War on Terrorism” will have become a footnote in history.

William John Cox is a retired supervising prosecutor for the State Bar of California. As a police officer he wrote the Policy Manual of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Role of the Police in America for a national advisory commission. Acting as a public interest, pro bono lawyer, he filed a class action lawsuit in 1979 on behalf of every citizen of the United States petitioning the Supreme Court to order the other two branches of the federal government to conduct a National Policy Referendum; he investigated and successfully sued a group of radical right-wing organizations in 1981 that denied the Holocaust; and he arranged in 1991 for publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls. His 2004 book, You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is reviewed athttp://www.yourenotstupid.com, and he is currently working on a fact-based fictional political philosophy. His writings are collected at http://www.thevoters.org, and he can be contacted atu2cox@msn.com.

Has Saad Hariri Finally Figured-Out Who Killed His Dad?

Hariri appeals to Lebanese to unite to resist Israeli threat

MICHAEL JANSEN

LEBANESE PRIME minister Saad Hariri has called for national unity ahead of Sunday’s mass rally on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of his father, former premier Rafik Hariri.

Mr Hariri said unity was the “most powerful weapon in our hands to face up to Israeli threats”, including daily intrusions into Lebanese air space by Israeli warplanes in violation of the ceasefire which ended the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese Shia Hizbullah movement.

“It’s not a secret that Israel has vicious intentions toward Lebanon because Israel is the enemy,” he said.

He made it clear that the government would stand behind Hizbullah, now a mainstream political party with two cabinet ministers.

In recent weeks, Israel has repeatedly threatened to strike Lebanon in response to any Hizbullah attack on Israel.

Lebanese president Michel Suleiman, a former army chief, warned that an Israeli attack on Lebanon would be “no picnic” while Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said Damascus would support “Lebanon against any possible Israeli aggression”.

In response to a statement by Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak that Israel’s army should prepare for war with Syria if efforts to resume peace talks failed, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem warned that Israel’s cities could be targeted if Syria was attacked.

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman retorted that Syria would lose any conflict with Israel and its regime would be toppled.

In a bid to calm tensions, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that war was not imminent. However the exchanges prompted Saudi Arabia to appeal to the international community to deal firmly with Israeli threats against Lebanon and Syria and end Israel’s “inhumane” treatment of Palestinians.

Hizbullah is unlikely to initiate a fresh conflict with Israel. The 2006 conflict left the movement’s strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs and south Lebanon in ruins and killed 1,200 Lebanese, the majority civilians, and 157 Israelis, mainly soldiers.

Israel’s devastating campaign was sparked by the seizure of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border Hizbullah raid. The movement’s secretary general, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, apologised to his countrymen for miscalculating the Israeli response to the snatch.

Dissident Palestinian factions have on occasion fired rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon, risking conflagration.

Back to Jerusalem: And it’s Burning!

eileen fleming

What follows this expose by The Palestine Monitor, is something I wrote in 2009 and 2005 on this topic.

Jerusalem Is Burning

Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) is one of several organisations working to bring the violations occurring in East Jerusalem to the attention of the world. Their Chief Executive, Rabbi Asherman reports, “I see Jerusalem in flames, and know that my words will not succeed in conveying the horror of what I see or the dread in my heart…”

RHR was formed in 1988 and though the work of the organisation is broad its current focus is on the situation in East Jerusalem, in particular the events unfurling in Sheikh Jarrah.

The struggle for justice in Sheikh Jarrah

Maya Wind is the RHR press officer and every week she has been coordinating demonstrations across Jerusalem to expose and protest the injustices occurring in Sheikh Jarrah.

Sheikh Jarrah is one of the most contentious neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem with 28 properties embroiled in a legal battle between fundamentalist Israeli settlers and the Palestinians who live there. Maya describes the atmosphere as “extremely, extremely explosive. There are constantly violent outbreaks (…) settlers are provocative on purpose.”

The silencing of protest

Israelis from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv gather in Sheikh Jarrah in support of the evicted Palestinian families

Photo: Brady Ng

The protest in Sheikh Jarrah has begun to build a self sustaining momentum, with regular crowds of hundreds turning out. Last week two coach loads of activists drove up from Tel Aviv: it was the largest demonstration yet in Sheikh Jarrah. But as the demonstrators grow in number and the media start to cover the event extensively, so do Israeli security forces attempts to shut the protest down. Last Friday the police refused to grant the permit for marching from West to East Jerusalem and stormed the crowd of demonstrators, arresting 22 of them. The human rights community in Israel has moved quickly to condemn this cynical attempt to silence legitimate protest.

Israeli police cracking down on the demonstrators

Photo: Brady Ng

Holding back the demonstrators

Photo: Brady Ng

As the demonstration continued through the afternoon, the israeli police called for reinforcement for crowd control

Photo: Brady Ng

“The police are calling us outlaws and anarchists, despite the fact that the crowd here is mostly composed of professors from the Hebrew University and Jerusalemite teens who sing protest songs to the sound of drums,”“While the officers suppress our protests, sometimes violently, haredim and settlers riot unhindered in the neighborhood and attack Palestinian residents – sometimes to the point at which they require medical treatment.” said Avner Inbar, a left-wing activist.

Israeli police clear a path for Jewish settlers who are entering Sheikh Jarrah

Photo: Brady Ng

Apathy and dissent

Security tactics are getting more extreme and so to are the reactions ordinary Jerusalemites are having to the demonstration as it weaves from the predominantly Israeli West to the Palestinian East of the city. Maya reports, “We’re called traitors, cursed at, eggs are thrown at us. But that’s only positive, it shows we are having an impact, that we are making people outraged and that’s important because I’m equally outraged by what’s going on here.”

Maya works throughout the week to engage ordinary Israelis with the issue of Sheikh Jarrah, in particular targeting young people through flyering universities and nightclubs where the main obstacle she faces is not opposition but indifference.

“People are just very apathetic; they can’t be bothered to find out what’s happening in East Jerusalem. For many Jerusalemites East Jerusalem might as well be another country, they never venture here.”

With a wisdom that belies her 19 years, Maya joined RHR after being released from Israeli prison last March having served time following her refusal to serve in the Israeli Army. Four years ago a conversation with a Palestinian girl turned her life around.

“I was 15 and I had one conversation with a Palestinian girl who told me one story about something soldiers did to her father and that was the burst of my bubble.”

As a young teenager Maya had to reeducate herself about the reality of the Israeli Occupation and she is now an active member of the peace movement. Alongside the demonstration Maya regularly stays over with families under eviction orders. Her aim is to bring these human rights violations to the attention of the world and to show solidarity with the families under threat, “for the morale of the family it’s very important for them to feel, in this case, that the occupiers care and that there are Israelis who are opposing this.”

To find out more about Sheikh Jarrah on Palestine Monitor

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…

To find out more about Rabbis for Human Rights visit http://www.rhr.org.il/index.php?lan…

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The Many Layers of NaHalat Shimon beg the question: Where’s the money coming from?
Published first August 8, 2009

[Occupied East Jerusalem] Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is being taken over by the Nahalat Shimon settlers.

“The events in Sheikh Jarrah garnered international censure from the European Union, the United Nations (UN) and from Britain, which said it was ‘appalled’ at the move. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday night called the Israeli evictions “deeply regrettable” and she urged “the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions.” [1]

Israeli forces also demolished the Al-Kurd family protest tent for the sixth time. The Al-Kurd family was evicted from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood last November, just prior to my first visit and I returned again on June 10, 2009.

Less than a five minute walk from my room at the Ambassador Hotel and less than ten from the Old City of Jerusalem is the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Around the corner from my hotel and up the hill from the Al-Kurd Tent is a newly erected community center with a plaque “Dedicated to the Children of Shimon Hazadik Neighborhood” from a Dr. Rubin Brecher and family of Lawrence, New York.

According to Jewish tradition, Shimon Hazadik (which means ‘The righteous’) was the High Priest at the time of Alexander the Great. He reminded the people of what’s important in the world and he used to say: “On three things the world stands: the Torah, on Service [prayer] and on acts of kindness.”[2]

Mrs. Al-Kurd, known as Um Kamal [mother of Kamal] and her now deceased husband Mohammed had lived in the neighborhood from 1956 until the morning of November 9, 2008 when the Israeli police enforced a court order that evicted them.

When I returned to the tent on June 10, 2009 and asked Um Kamal where her calm strength and perpetual smile came from, she gestured to the sky and responded, “Allah: God gives me.”

Maher Hannoun interjected, “Um Kamal is a strong woman because she has a strong connection to this land where we both were born! Even for millions of dollars we would never sell our land, our hopes, our dreams! We are here legally and we have a contract that was signed between the government and UNWRRA, but what gives us the real power to fight is seeing all the people who come to be with us here believing in human rights. We need every one to carry our message around the world that this is our home and we will never leave here.

“In Gaza they attacked with F16 tanks. In Jerusalem they attack with evictions and transferring property. More than 500 homes in this neighborhood have already received eviction notices. They are building 200 settler units and an American Israeli company named Nahalat Shimon Builders is behind it.”

Nahalat Shimon is also the name of a settler group and a real estate company.

On August 2, 2009, “Israeli riot police wielding clubs kicked out two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, defying international protests over Jewish settlement activity in the area. Clashes erupted after police moved in at dawn around the homes in the upmarket Arab district of Sheikh Jarrah following an Israeli court decision ordering the eviction of the 53 Palestinians, including 19 minors.

“I was born in this house and so were my children,” said Maher Hanoun, whose family was evicted along with the neighboring Ghawi household. “Now we are on the streets. We have become refugees.”

“The Supreme Court ordered the evictions following an appeal by the Nahalat Shimon International settler group which claimed Jewish settlers have title deeds for the properties, despite UN and Palestinian denials. Jerusalem authorities have also given permission for the construction of about 20 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah, in defiance of global calls for a halt to all settlement activity in occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank.” [3]

On November 9, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Reverend Richard Toll was awakened in his hotel room in the Ambassador while the Israeli Occupying Forces/IOF broke down the door of the home of the Al Khurd family. Rev. Toll informed me that he was jarred awake by a woman’s pain filled scream that was indescribable.

The Al Khurd family had lived in their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood since the days when east Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations upon contract with Jordan allotted them the land after they became refugees when they were expelled from their home in west Jerusalem by Zionists during the 1948 war.

Hasib Nashashibi, of the Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights [an NGO coalition of Palestinian Muslim and Christians] explained to me, “When Jordan controlled this land and the UN granted privileges to the Palestinian refugees including those from west Jerusalem, such as education, health care, and relief and development; they also allowed the refugees to give up some privileges and receive a home and land deed instead. Jordan never fulfilled their obligation to send the written documentation that these west Jerusalem refugees are land owners and not tenants. Now the Israeli’s are trying to make them refugees for the second time!”

Since East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967, the Oriental Jews Associations and the Knesseth Yisrael Association have been waging a brutal take over of the Khurds’ home, claiming that the land originally belonged to Jews.

In 1972, they succeeded to register the land in their name with the Israeli Land registrar. In 1999, settlers burst into the home and set up an occupation in a wing of the house that belonged to the couple’s son, Raed. The Khurd family hired lawyers and have spent a fortune in court battles and in 2006, the Israeli court finally revoked the claim of ownership by the settlers. However, on February 25, 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court issued an order to evict the settlers but it was never enforced!

In Israeli law, all of Jerusalem, including the eastern half of the city, is considered to be the “indivisible” capital of the Jewish state and religiously fundamentalist settlers have been claiming land all over occupied East Jerusalem based on title deeds that pre-existed 1948.

Since Israel became a state 531 Palestinian villages have been destroyed and 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees in 1948, and Israel continues to make more!

President George W. Bush became a willing collaborator in this on going injustice in his infamous 2004 exchange of letters with Ariel Sharon. Bush agreed that Israel would not be expected to return to the armistice lines of 1949 and declared that Israel would be able to hold on to its “population centers” in the West Bank. This is nothing more than Orwellian spin that attempts to justify the established settlement blocs for every one of them are illegal under international law.

“Michshol Hafrada” is Hebrew for “The Separation Wall” and separation translates to Apartheid in Afrikaan.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out And to whom I was likely to give offence. Something there is that does not love a wall, That wants it down.-Robert Frost

The Wall has divided Palestinians from Palestinians and has stolen their aquifers, denies them access to their land, jobs, families and holy sites and for every mile it consumes over $1.25 Million USA Tax dollars.

The Wall was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice but no president has yet demanded Israel to tear down this wall!

The so called Holy Land is a Swiss cheese of land locked enclaves; known as Bantustans in Afrikaan. Jewish only colonies have been implanted to divide the Palestinian neighborhoods throughout occupied territory. Over 100,000 Palestinians are trapped and then daily humiliated and tortured at the over 600 checkpoints that deny them access to their families, land, jobs, resources and holy sites.

Since 1967, over 22,000 dwellings -averaging eleven people per unit- have been bulldozed by Israeli forces usually because they interfere with settlement expansion.

Israel attempts to justify their immoral actions with three distinct categories:

1. Collective Punishment: Homes of suspected terrorists-in reality that is anyone who opposes the occupation- as well as the families of suicide/homicide bombers.

These punitive actions amount to 15% of the over 22,000 homes destroyed since 1967.

2. Administrative demolitions for lack of building permits: Israel refuses to issue any and this accounts for 25%. In occupied east Jerusalem one out of four Palestinian homes have a demolition order.

3. Security: The blanket reason given for all of Israel’s injustices and illegal actions.

On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South Africa’s Apartheid regime was quoted in The Guardian: ”I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

I imagine Shimon Hazadik might remind “the children” who are taking over the neighborhood that,”From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:

“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [4]

I also imagine Shimon Hazadik might be interested- as we all should- in knowing from whom and where the money comes from that equips the Nahalat Shimon settlers.

1.  http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0804/p06s12-wome.html
2.  http://www.chabadonline.com/scripts/tgij/paper/Articlecm.asp?articleID=1289
3.   http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=200983\story_3-8-2009_pg4_6
4.   Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

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Dear Reader: This chapter is based on an actual email conversation I had with an Episcopal priest, but as I was writing fiction in 2005, I wrote for KEEP HOPE ALIVE. Chapter 16: A CONFRONTATIONAL CONVERSATION “Father Paul, you cannot possibly be telling me that an Episcopal priest has been taken in by fundamentalist theology?” Terese incredulously asked the new assistant to the rector at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church in Orlando, who also served at the noon mass every Wednesday. Father Paul Hendricks was a passionate evangelist on a mission to convert every Jew he encountered to become a Christian. Terese had kept her silence for the first six months she had been listening to his Wednesday noon sermons, but finally broke her silence after the rest of the parishioners had departed. Paul sighed and shook his head. “Look, Mrs. Hunter, I read your op/ed in the newspaper about Israel and Palestine, and we both agree we want peace; we just go about it differently.” “Father, let me say that the fastest growing cult in the U.S.A. is the cult of Christian Zionism. Approximately 25 million U.S. Christians believe as you do, and I am most depressed to see that the simple answers of fundamentalism have reached their tentacles into the thinking man’s church. You just preached for thirteen minutes on Genesis 12:3–‘I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse: and in you all the families of the world are blessed’–as if God meant blessings to be political power and military might. Father, surely you understand that the belief of the ancient Israelites, who held that they were chosen, as if they were somehow special from others, as if God esteemed them above others, is just basic primitive nationalism. Come on, Father, looking down on one’s enemies to foster one’s own tribal interest and praying to God to smite one’s enemies is what the ancients did. Isn’t it about time we moved beyond that limited thinking?” Father Paul clenched his fists and held them behind his back, as he suppressed a simmering rage. He stood nine inches above Terese’s upturned head, and with a slick smile and condescending tone told her, “Mrs. Hunter, you are very misled. The text is understood to mean a blessing to Abraham’s lineage–” Terese cut in. “Agreed! And Genesis 12:3 was promised even before Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, and Isaac, the Jew, were born! And what about the very first mention of Israel? Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with God. That is how I understand Israel; everyone who struggles and wrestles with God is Israel, too. Israel means more than a geographical location, Father Paul.” “Mrs. Hunter, the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophetic scriptures, and God’s covenant with Israel is eternal, exclusive, and will not be abrogated. I refer you to Genesis 12:1-7, 15:4-7, 17:1-8; Leviticus 26:44-45; and Deuteronomy 7:7:8.” “And Father, I refer you to Matthew 5:43-45, which does not only critique Genesis 12:3; it blows it apart, for Christ commanded, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despite-fully use you, that you maybe children of your Father.” The two had reached Paul’s SUV and he silently prayed he could make a swift escape, but Terese had positioned herself at the driver’s door, and if he were to open it swiftly, she could be easily moved aside. Father Paul entertained the thought for more than a moment, but remained mute and still, as the tiny woman exploded with a torrent of words. “Look, blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed them to become a big bully, and isn’t God always on the side of the oppressed? My sense is that you Zionists see the political state of Israel as a replacement for Christ, at the center of the Christian faith, and that certainly is not Christianity! “How do you take Genesis 12:3 to literally mean that blessings equal land and political power, yet ignore God’s promise in Genesis 21:17-20 to ‘make a great nation out of Ishmael’s descendants and that ‘God was with the boy.’ Yet your way of thinking allows the growing apartheid wall to continue, and supports occupation and oppression of people that God also made promises too.” “Mrs. Hunter, why don’t you make an appointment and we can discuss this further? I really have to go.” “Okay, I can take a hint, but let me leave you with this: when religion and politics are in bed together, everybody gets screwed! The Israeli government is using you Zionists as apologists in support of their agenda of illegal occupation and settlements in the West bank, Golan, and Gaza, on literal biblical grounds taken out of context. Your blind allegiance to every act of Israel, understood as being orchestrated by God and which should therefore be condoned, supported, and even praised, makes me want to puke! And I wonder about the true motives of Christians who actually relish the idea of Armageddon and love to speculate on who gets ‘left behind.’ Christ was very clear that there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who were so sure they were in, but get left out. God has always been on the side of the oppressed, and your uncritical endorsement and justification for Israel’s racist and apartheid policies are an abomination.” The stunned and silent priest watched in relief as Terese turned, flipped her braid, and walked away.

Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine

Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org

‘Gorilla Baby’ Born In Gaza

by Earl Morningstarr

The births of deformed babies in Gaza has increased since the Israeli offensive which took place last year, Palestinian doctors claim.

Most recently a woman gave birth to a child at the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip which was severely deformed, the baby boy’s face was malformed, his nose is flattened, there is reddish-brownish skin discoloration and the limbs are short with the feet curling in, a similar shape to a gorilla’s.

The child, unsurprisingly nicknamed ‘Gorilla Baby’ was abandoned by his parents. The mother and father of the little boy have left the hospital and refuse to go back and claim the baby, so he will remain under the hospital’s custody until other arrangements can be made.

Doctors at the hospital say that Gorilla Baby and a host of other mutated children are not the result of genetic conditions, they point the finger squarely at the use of white phosphorus by the Israeli armed forces.

Israel is NOT and Never was a Democracy

eileen fleming “President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. are fully committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell told reporters following his latest meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas while in the Jordanian capital of Amman.Mitchell’s remarks come just a few days after President Obama said the U.S. administration had “overestimated” their ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to resume “meaningful” peace talks. On January 24, 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, persisted in Israel’s policy of laying claim by establishing “facts on the ground” in the West Bank during a tree planting ceremony in the Gush Etzion colony/settlement bloc, ”Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.”[1] In 1973, Ariel Sharon predicted, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” The 2003 peace “road map” obliged Israel to freeze “all settlement activity” and the World Court ruled that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are all illegal. Jewish settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria but they ignore what their Torah commands: “From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]: “When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [2] On January 22, 2010, Stephen M. Walt, esteemed Professor of international relations at Harvard University affirmed that Mideast special envoy George Mitchell, maybe the only politician in recent memory “to be universally admired in the United States” but warned if he wants to keep “his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign because he is wasting his time” vis a vie reaching a resolution to the six decades of conflict in Israel Palestine. Walt sited,Joe Klein’s report in the Times, that President Obama’s commitment to achieving a two states solution has failed and “this is as intractable a problem as you get.” [3] On January 24, 2010, James M. Wall, a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, wrote, “My dictionary says an intractable problem is that which is not easily governed, managed, directed, manipulated, relieved or cured. It does not say the problem is impossible to solve. What would make this particular problem impossible to solve is for the President to continue down the road he has followed in his first year in office. It is time for some serious policy overhauling. It is time to face the ghosts of the past. When it is time for some serious ghost busting, who you gonna call? I suggest Mitchell try a new perspective. Call Henry Siegman.” [4] In the January 7, 2010 edition of The Nation, Seigman noted, ”Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world. “In short, Middle East peacemaking efforts will continue to fail, and the possibility of a two-state solution will disappear, if US policy continues to ignore developments on the ground in the occupied territories and within Israel, which now can be reversed only through outside intervention. President Obama is uniquely positioned to help Israel reclaim Jewish and democratic ideals on which the state was founded–if he does not continue ‘politics as usual.’” [5] Israel is not-and never has been a Democracy! In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained: “The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.” Jeff Halper, American Israeli, co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Professor of Anthropology, explains: “An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a county actually ‘belongs.’”[6] The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired and which affirms that the state of Israel: “Will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…and will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture: it will safeguard the Holy places of all religions, and it will be faithful to the principals of the Charter of the United Nations.” In a 2005 interview with Jeff Halper, he informed this reporter: “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.” The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law and very foundation and source of legal authority that underlies the very existence of these United States and the federal government. The US Constitution provides the framework for the organization of the federal government and under pins the relationship of the federal government to the states and all its citizens/people within these United States. Jeff Halper hit another nail on the head when he wrote that the ”entire conflict with the Palestinians has been reduced to one consideration: personal security…Israeli Jews prefer peace and compromise, but only if they are convinced that their prime preoccupation-security- has been credibly addressed.” [7] So, let’s address it! The brutal truth is that only if we truly love our friends will we always be honest with them and we call them on their bad behavior! There will never be security for Israeli Jews without justice for the indigenous people of the so called holy land which has been disseminated into Bantustans-disconnected enclaves populated by human beings who have been justice: equal and inalienable human rights due to colonialism, imperialism, military might and Zionism, which have been aided and abetted by American Government foreign policy and billions of USA Taxpayers bucks! “Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”[8] Just before Christmas 2010, President Obama, signed into law the biggest aid pledge of the year. NOT for struggling countries on the World Bank’s list, not for we the people without health care, but another $3 billion for Israel in 2010 and an extra $30 billion over the next decade! It is past time for the US to comprehend that the Israeli-Palestinian affects the entire world and is at the very root of Anti-Semitic and Anti-American sentiment and this conflict is not and never has been between equals! In 2005, Jeff Halper  also informed this reporter: “Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. What gives us hope is that as this conflict worsens maybe Europe will figure out that American policies are against their interests and intervene…This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA. “If we do fix this conflict it would be a tremendous step forward in global reconciliation…This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention. “It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. “In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa! The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives. “Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side. “Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.” [9] In my video interview with the Whistle blower of Israel’s WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu, taped a few weeks after his Freedom of Speech Trial began in Jerusalem, he stated: “It’s very sad that Hilary Clinton went to the Jewish Wailing Wall and forgot the real crying wall is the Palestinian wall; the apartheid wall, the wall is not for defense, but to keep this conflict permanent. “The Israelis have 200 atomic weapons and they accuse the Palestinians and Muslims of terrorism. “Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew.” [10] On November 8, 2006, Dr. Ilan Pappe, spoke in East Jerusalem, during Sabeel’s [www.sabeel.org] 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful: AKA Palestinian Christians. Dr. Pappe spoke about the “Dynamics of Forgetting” and it is past time to remember that in Tel Aviv ”on March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns. “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20′s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.” Haganah is Hebrew for “The Defense” and was a Jewish paramilitary organization formed in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948. In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination; Haganah “units” were very localized and poorly armed and consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment. It went from being an untrained militia to a capable army. The British did not officially recognize the Haganah, but British security forces cooperated with them and by 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed the Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi: The National Military Organization. The Irgun were discontented with the policy of restraint when faced with British and Arab pressure and were “terrorists” in their own right. The Irgun later split in 1940, and their offshoot became known as the “Lehi” a Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, known as the Freedom Fighters of Israel and also the “Stern Gang” after its leader, Abraham Stern. The groups had different functions, but all served to move the British out of Palestine and to make Palestine a Jewish state rather than create a Jewish home in Palestine. Menachem Begin, an Irgun commander, stated in a 1944 meeting: “In fact, there is a division of roles; One organization advocates individual terrorism (the Lehi), the other conducts sporadic military operations (the Irgun) and there is a third organization which prepares itself to throw its final weight in the decisive war.” Dr. Pappe explained that in 1948, the ”systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns. “The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened. “From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a CRIME against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. “This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine. “Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media. “To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship. “In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals! “But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology. “Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this. “The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH!” In his book, “Later Years” Albert Einstein wrote: “This is a time when there seems to be a particular need for men of philosophical persuasion—that is to say, friends of wisdom and truth—to join together…We Jews should be, and remain, the carriers and patrons of spiritual values. But we should also always be aware of the fact that these spiritual values are and always have been the common goal of mankind.” [Page 268] The truth is often brutal, but if the US truly desires Israel to be secure and also be known as an honest broker for peace in the Middle East, we must first know the truth and then always speak our mind, for as William Blake penned: “Opposition is True Friendship” and enough has become more than enough! 1. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144702.html 2. Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007 3. http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/22/time_for_george_mitchell_to_resign 4. http://wallwritings.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/mitchell-and-the-intractable-time-to-call-in-henry-siegman/ 5. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100125/siegman 6. Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Page 74 7. An Israeli in Palestine, Pages 65-66. Pluto Press, 2008 8. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” 9. Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory 10. “30 Minutes with Vanunu” streaming @ http://wearewideawake.org/ Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org

US nuclear duplicity

[Both regional peace and security can be achieved once the hypocritical American double-dealing ends.  American control has always extended to maintaining a balance of terror, to be upset on American whims.  The American "Raj" has to come to an end, so that the human race can be liberated.  Nations who have become intoxicated with power, by submitting to American control, must be sobered up.  India has to shake-off this unrealistic belief that "nuclear war is survivable."  The world is waking-up to the awful reality of Hindu beliefs in caste and seeing others as less than "human," which creates the belief that one-half a billion collateral deaths is an "acceptable loss."  Indian dreams of "greatness" stand in stark contrast to its delusional Zionist-infected beliefs that "democracy" can exist in a nation that holds entire classes of its citizens as cattle, or worse, "Goyim."  Zionist ideas are a poison that conscientious citizens of the world will no longer voluntarily swallow.] By Asif Ezdi

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service The National Command Authority (NCA) had a well-publicised meeting on Jan 13 against the background of recent statements by India’s army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor that his country is capable of conducting conventional military strikes against Pakistan under a nuclear umbrella, and of fighting both Pakistan and China at the same time. The NCA meeting was also significant because it took place a week before the start of the 2010 session of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), at which the commencement of negotiations on a treaty on limiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons will be the major issue of discussion. Kapoor’s statements reflect a dilemma that India has faced since the nuclear tests of 1998. While India established its claim to be a nuclear power, it also forced Pakistan to demonstrate its nuclear capability. The resulting nuclear standoff between the two countries made a resort to conventional warfare an extremely risky venture and had the effect of largely neutralising the advantage in conventional weapons capability that India enjoys over Pakistan. But India is unwilling to accept this reality. As the reputed US journal Arms Control Today wrote in its issue of July/August 2009, “Indian military planners foolishly believe they can engage in and win a limited conventional conflict without triggering a nuclear exchange, even though the Pakistani army’s strategy relies on nuclear weapons to offset India’s overwhelming conventional superiority.” It is this thinking that lies behind India’s offensive military doctrines like “Cold Start,” and statements such as those made by Kapoor. These warnings are not only “foolish” but they also become highly dangerous when they come from a senior official of a major foreign power, such as the declaration by US defence secretary Robert Gates last week that if there was a repeat of the Mumbai incident, India should not be expected to show the same restraint that it exercised last time. This statement can only be characterised as highly irresponsible. It is also illogical, because Gates acknowledged that the terrorist threat came from non-state actors outside the control of the Pakistani authorities. Not only that, he also tried to convince the Pakistani leadership in Islamabad that the country did not face any threat on its eastern borders. The defence secretary evidently does not seem to have realised the inherent contradiction between these two stances. The uneasy peace that the region has enjoyed in recent years rests mainly on the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. That is why the proposed Fissile Material Treaty (FMT), which could significantly affect the future nuclear programmes of Pakistan and India, is of such vital interest. The CD broke an 11-year impasse in May last year by agreeing on a work programme for negotiating the treaty. But the commencement of negotiations was held up because of differences over the implementation of the work programme. Pakistan insisted that progress on the FMT should proceed in tandem with the other core issues before the CD. Largely because of Pakistani objections, the CD could not commence its work on the FMT last year. At the opening session of the CD this year (Jan 19), the Pakistani delegation proposed that the conference should also consider conventional arms control at the regional level and negotiate a global regime on all aspects of missiles. Because of the lack of agreement on this proposal, the adoption of the agenda has been delayed. Behind these procedural questions, there are important substantive differences. There is no agreement yet on the fundamental question whether the treaty should only prohibit future production or deal also with existing stocks of fissile material. Pakistan has pointed out that freezing the existing asymmetries would undermine its security. The Pakistani delegation has also underlined that for Pakistan the issue is linked to the decision of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), taken in 2008 at US initiative, to allow nuclear trade with India, while continuing the embargo on Pakistan. This deal, as Pakistan has maintained, would enable India to produce substantial additional quantities of fissile material for nuclear weapons and consequently upset strategic balance in the region. The NCA underlined in its press release that during consideration of the FMT by the CD, Pakistan would not accept any discriminatory measures that perpetuate regional instability or are prejudicial to its national security. This is absolutely right. But the question remains whether the procedural tactics being employed by our delegation to stall the work of the CD on the FMT are the best means of achieving our goals. The alternative would be to take part in the negotiations and work for a treaty which is in keeping with our national interests. Failing that, we could withhold our signatures from it. This is the course India has taken. New Delhi has reservations on halting the production of fissile material and has declared that it will not accept obligations that hinder its nuclear weapons programme. But it has not obstructed negotiations on the treaty. After the procedural moves made by our delegation in Geneva, Washington and other supporters of the FMT may be expected to make diplomatic demarches urging Islamabad to withdraw its objections to the proposed CD agenda. And if the past is any guide, our Government will not be able to stand up to U.S. pressure. Our fundamental problem is that our national security policies are largely determined by domestic political considerations. Our response to the India-US nuclear deal is a striking example of this attitude. After it was made public in July 2005, the Musharraf regime made some noises in public expressing its unhappiness but, as Undersecretary of State William J Burns indicated in a meeting with the press in December 2006, Musharraf let it be known privately that he was “not unhappy” with the deal. Musharraf was clearly not prepared to jeopardise US support for his rule. Musharraf’s policies on this issue have been followed under Zardari – and for the same reasons. He has not taken up the question of Pakistan’s access to civilian nuclear technology in any of his meetings with US leaders. Nor has Gilani or Foreign Minister Qureshi. Also, Nawaz Sharif has not raised it in any of his public speeches or his meetings with visiting leaders from the US administration or Congress. Our “sovereign” parliament has not discussed it either. In July 2008, several retired ambassadors of Pakistan called upon the government to make civil nuclear cooperation a high-priority issue in our agenda with the United States and other leading NSG members. Later, in September 2009 some former ambassadors wrote in an open letter to Obama that if Pakistan continues to be denied access to civilian nuclear technology on the same terms as India, our partnership with US in the global effort to eradicate terrorism would remain fragile and Pakistan would not be in a position to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or the FMT. Gilani occasionally complains to the media about the double standards of US policy on international civilian nuclear cooperation. He recently brought up this matter with a US congressional delegation. Someone needs to tell him that it is not to the media and US congressmen but the US president and heads of government of other leading NSG countries to whom he should be addressing himself. In a letter to Zardari last November, Obama offered an expanded strategic partnership to Pakistan. If Gilani is serious, he should now write to the US president to emphasise that if this partnership is to be meaningful, it must include access for Pakistan to civilian nuclear technology. The prime minister should also urge Obama to take the lead in getting Pakistan a waiver from NSG guidelines similar to that given to India. This issue should be made a priority item of the bilateral agenda, starting with the talks being hosted by Hillary Clinton in Washington next month. Gilani should similarly take it up with other leading NSG members. The writer is a former member of the Foreign Service. Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com

The Lessons Learned from Israel: In Secret War the Aggressor Is Always the Victim

[Always berate your opponent for copying your own behavior.  Hypocrisy is the hallmark of "counter-insurgency."

"Pakistan keeps pursuing its strategy of inflicting a thousand cuts on India. There is little reason to believe that Pakistan will abandon that low-cost, minimum risk but high returns terror enterprise either now or in the foreseeable future."]

American doublespeak

Rajiv Dogra

It was and remains a practiced part of the American routine to say in India what goes down well with the Indian media. However, as soon as Americans are on Pakistani soil, they recraft what they said in India. That’s precisely what US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has done

Alas, we are easy to please. Otherwise we would have known that what they say here isn’t how they reassure there. Like the British during the days of the Empire, Americans feel that they now have the international licence to pontificate. By and large the world too falls in line; with the exception of China which has recently taken to hitting them back with equal vehemence.

But turning back to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ recent visit, just look at the ecstatic response he got from us when he said in New Delhi that “India would find it difficult to show the kind of restraint it did after 26/11 if there was another attack from the Pakistani soil”. We failed of course to recognise that it was a practiced part of the American routine to say in India what goes down well with the media here.

However, as soon as they are on the Pakistani soil they nuance that same statement differently. There, they are under intense scrutiny, and not just by the media. According to Dawn, after addressing Pakistan’s National Defence University Mr Gates commented that his statement in India had been misunderstood.

And just to make things amply clear to the American visitor, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani reportedly told him, “Pakistan is itself facing Mumbai like attacks almost every day and when we cannot protect our own citizens, how can we guarantee that there wouldn’t be any more terrorist hits in India.”

This of course should not come as a surprise because from the very beginning Pakistan has perfected ‘denial’ into an art form. And when cornered, as it nearly was after 26/11, it pretends injured innocence. No wonder then that time and again Pakistan has been let off the hook by the international community.

Thus emboldened, Pakistan keeps pursuing its strategy of inflicting a thousand cuts on India. There is little reason to believe that Pakistan will abandon that low-cost, minimum risk but high returns terror enterprise either now or in the foreseeable future.

If Pakistan has been consistent in its approach, so it seems are we. Ours, however, is the uniformity of the timid.

Despite Mr Shashi Tharoor’s withering view of aspects of Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy, it will be hard to disagree with Nehru’s observations on a policy file at the height of tensions in Kashmir in December 1947. After sketching out Pakistan’s aggression, he reflected on India’s response, “It seems to me that our outlook has been defensive and apologetic, as if we were ashamed of what we were doing and we are not quite sure of how far we should go. I see nothing to apologise for and a defensive way of meeting raiders seems to me completely wrong.”

Then, as now, his assessment rings true. Had Nehru been alive today, wouldn’t he have written similarly on the policy files of Ministry of External Affairs?

Essentially our response remains the same; tepid, just along the lines of Nehru’s lament. Be it the terrorist attack on Parliament when we lined up troops futilely along the border, or the Kargil war when we refrained from crossing the LoC, or 26/11 when for long we kept insisting that it was the work of non-state actors; the essence of our response remains half-hearted and apologetic.

But having written what he wrote in 1947, would Nehru have handled any of these situations differently; a bit more firmly?

Nehru himself provides a clue as to how he may have reacted. In that same note of December 1947 he goes on to add, “Are we to allow Pakistan to continue to train new armies for invasion and allow its territory to be used as a base for these attacks? The obvious course is to strike at these concentrations and lines of communications in Pakistan territory. From a military point of view this would be the most effective step. We have refrained from taking it because of political considerations. We shall have to reconsider this position because a continuation of the present situation is intolerable… This involves a risk of war with Pakistan. We wish to avoid war, but it is merely deluding ourselves to imagine that we are avoiding war so long as the present operations are continuing on either side.”

This was no moralistic running commentary. It was hard headed realism, yet he held back. The point at issue is not war, but the nature of our response. Why was it that having diagnosed correctly and having made the right prescription, Nehru refrained from taking the action that he had advocated? Doesn’t that signal weakness? Isn’t this a major reason why deterrence is not seen by others as a part of our armoury?

Call it complacence, fatalism or supine acceptance or whatever else you wish; but one thing is clear. This lack of an effective response on our part has nothing to do with the caste, creed or belief. It is simply a product of the benign Indian soil. Any one of our one billion would probably be equally soft and forgiving. Perhaps, this attitude has more to do with a deeply ingrained desire not to displease the other.

The confidence that we will not strike back, and hurt, is a major reason why India has suffered foreign rulers for over a thousand years. While our response, or lack of it, has remained static others have diversified.

The nature of aggression has changed; terror has been added as an important new dimension to war since that first invasion of Kashmir in 1947. State and non-state actors are coordinating their strategy brazenly; look for instance at the frustrating way Pakistan keeps asking India for more, and yet more evidence, when everything that happened in 26/11 was planned on the Pakistani soil. The nature of targets has changed too. It is no longer simply a case of conquest of territory. Pakistan uses to the full its capacity to befuddle the west, with consequent pressure on India to accommodate and concede.

A manifestation of this tactic is the rumours afloat currently that India will initiate the dialogue. There is also the increasingly frequent talk that autonomy for Kashmir is a matter of time. But others warn grimly that autonomy would be the thin end of the Pakistani wedge. They doubt that Pakistan’s gameplan is limited to Kashmir; otherwise the targets of its terror would not have principally included India’s economic centres.

That it should be so is natural, because the world over there is growing recognition that India is poised at the edge of economic greatness. But prosperity, and economic heights, cannot be sustained in isolation. To remain truly great, a country must be powerful and should be perceived as so by its enemies. It is a historical fact that financially rich, but militarily weak, nations are tempting targets; just as India was so often in the past.

Therefore, it will be simplistic to presume that goodwill alone will safeguard our prosperity. Or that conceding demands like autonomy will be the end of our troubles with Pakistan. In fact it may mark a new beginning of them; for the simple reason that while India has consistently used democracy as a tool for nation building that has not been the case on the other side.

Pakistan’s birth was based on the ideology of exclusion. To complicate matters further its leaders have consistently reared Pakistani people on a diet of envy. Till Pakistan gets over that envy and its hatred of India, we are condemned by our benignity to live by its whims.

– The writer is a former Ambassador.

Tensions rise as Israeli Army stages maneuvers on border

[SEE:Report: Hezbollah moves long-range rockets to north Lebanon]

By Elias Sakr
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Media reports said Friday tensions rose on the Lebanese-Israeli border as the Israeli Army undertook military maneuvers on its northern border, while Hizbullah members were put on high alert, according to the pan-Arab daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat.

Asked whether Hizbullah members were put on high alert, the party’s spokesman Ibrahim Musawi told The Daily Star on Friday that Hizbullah was always ready to face any aggression but declined to elaborate further.

On Thursday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that he feared the situation in Iran might prompt officials in Tehran to behave

unpredictably, which could prove dangerous given Hizbullah’s weapons, and could lead to unfortunate events.  Kouchner made his statement at Paris following talks with Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri who expressed fear of an Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

As for Kouchner’s stance, Hizbullah issued a statement on Friday “strongly condemning” the minister’s remarks. “We see the clear [influence] of the Israeli voice and a complete disregard of the history and legacy of France in fighting aggression and occupation.”

Hizbullah said there was a contradiction in the remarks of Kouchner and the reports by UNIFIL peacekeeping forces in the south, about Israeli’s near-daily overflights of Lebanon and other acts.

“This stance [by Kouchner] is an attempt to absolve the Israeli enemy [of guilt] and cover its repeated violations of Lebanese sovereignty. This constitutes protection of the Israeli occupier and an encouragement for it to continue with its violations.”

On the Syrian front, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reported that Syria called on its fourth reserve brigade which includes Syrian workers in Lebanon.

It added that Syrian sources said Damascus was against any war against any Arab country and particularly Lebanon.

However, a high-ranking Israeli military official denied reports stating that Israel was considering launching a war against Lebanon, while stressing that military maneuvers were part of Israel’s routine defensive exercises, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reported.

The Israeli official reportedly said that Israel had earlier announced that it would undertake the large-scale military maneuvers in 2010 in order to learn from its experience during the 2006 war against Lebanon.

On the domestic front, Minyeh MP Ahmad Fatfat underlined Friday the importance of denying Israel any pretext which could be exploited to launch an aggression against Lebanon. “Repeated Israeli statements concerning an upcoming war do not come out of a vacuum,” said Fatfat, a Future Movement official.

Tackling Kouchner’s statement, Fatfat said the French foreign minister’s stance could be an attempt to highlight the dangerous regional situation.

“Both Hariri and Kouchner’s statements signal that the region is prone to instability and all parties should be alert during the upcoming period, so as not to give Israel any pretext to launch a devastating war against Lebanon,” Fatfat said.

“Perhaps French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner thought it was appropriate to point out dangers based on his political position and relations,” Fatfat added.

Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Higher Shiite Council, Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan, slammed Kouchner’s statement while rejecting “silly donations to the Lebanese Army” by unidentified countries.

“The Jordan Valley is Ours”–IDF Storm Troopers Will Not leave

New Israeli demand complicates US peace mission

By AMY TEIBEL

The Associated Press
Thursday, January 21, 2010; 4:10 AM

JERUSALEM — Washington’s Middle East envoy faced a new obstacle Thursday as he launched his latest attempt to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks: Israel wants to keep troops on the West Bank’s border with Jordan even if a deal is reached.

Palestinians rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand, made just before U.S. envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel on Wednesday. Mitchell has been laboring without success for a year to get both sides back to the negotiating table, and Netanyahu’s new demand made his mission even more formidable.

Netanyahu said Israel must maintain a presence “on the eastern side of a prospective Palestinian state” to keep militants from using the territory to launch rockets at Israel’s heartland.

The eastern side of such a state would be the part of the Jordan Valley that lies in the West Bank.

Saeb Erekat, a confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the demand “absolutely unacceptable.”

“The borders of the state of Palestine will be Jordan,” Erekat told Israel Radio. “The Jordan Valley is ours, is Palestine. Why do they insist on being on our territory?”

Netanyahu Prepares for Latest Lebanon Invasion to Feed Zionist Bloodlust

[This is not your typical idle Israeli threat; the "Jewish State" cannot survive without constant conflict.  SEE: Hariri Fearful of Possible Israeli Military Operation Against Lebanon

Within the fascist "Iron Walls" of that shitty little state that calls itself "Israel," bloodthirsty colonists scream for more, and "Bibbi" prepares to turn Lebanon into the latest "Colosseum" for the panting onlookers cheering from their stolen hilltops.

The "god" of Israel must have a new feast of blood.  That "god" is not the same God of Jesus or Mohammed.]

Israel Warns of ‘Ever-Growing’ Hizbullah Arsenal, Vows to ‘Stop’ Rocket Shipments from Syria, Iran

Israel has warned of the growing Hizbullah arsenal, expressing fears that the Shiite group is still seeking to avenge the assassination of its former military commander Imad Moughniyeh in Damascus two years ago.

Hizbullah says Moughniyeh’s murder was orchestrated by Israel.

While Israeli Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin described Hizbullah as “Iran’s spearhead in south Lebanon,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “cannot afford” to have rockets across from the center of the Jewish state.

Yadlin argued that Hizbullah recognizes that war with Israel does not enjoy popular support today on the Lebanese street, but is “trying to carry out a high-profile assassination” as revenge for Moughniyeh’s death in Damascus in 2008.

Hizbullah, Yadlin said, was different in this regard from other key international terrorist networks, such as al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad, which are focusing their energy on attacks that would result in mass deaths of Israelis.

Netanyahu, for his part, said the threat to Israel from Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon meant that any Palestinian state would be “demilitarized.”

He said the experience of rocket attacks from the Lebanese and Gaza borders means Israel must be able to prevent such weapons from being brought into a Palestinian entity in the West Bank.

“We cannot afford to have that across from the center of our country,” Netanyahu told foreign reporters in Jerusalem.

“We are surrounded by an ever-growing arsenal of rockets placed in the Iranian-supported enclaves to the north and to the south,” he said, referring to Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians want to create an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem with no Israeli presence, be it military or civilian.

Under the current situation, Israel is in overall control of the West Bank and its borders, though the Palestinian Authority patrols main population centers.

Netanyahu pointed to the defensive systems Israel is developing to destroy incoming rockets, but he admitted that they are “prohibitively expensive.”

He accused Syria and Iran without naming them of providing Hizbullah with arms and vowed to curb this.

“Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza get their rockets from neighboring countries, and that must be stopped,” he warned.

Hariri Fearful of Possible Israeli Military Operation Against Lebanon

Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed his fear from a possible “Israeli operation” against Lebanon, hinting at the excessive Israeli violations of the Lebanese airspace lately.
In an interview published Wednesday by the French newspaper Le Monde, Hariri said: “We fear an Israeli operation. Last week, 25 overflights for the Israeli fighter jets were recorded in one day.”

“Does Israel consider, by bombarding the south of the country, that it’s not aggressing against all of Lebanon? Or when it hits Dahyieh?” added Hariri.

Hariri, who started an official visit to France Wednesday, added: “What have the Israelis done in 2006? All of the bridges in Lebanon were destroyed. Isn’t that an aggression against Lebanon?”

Commenting on the theory saying that Israel waged the war in 2006 in response to an attack carried out by Hizbullah, Hariri said: “Is this enough to destroy Lebanon?”

“Israel can find any alibi, not to mention it doesn’t need alibis and it is not doing anything for the sake of the peace process.”

“We fear that they create a new conflict as they had done in the past,” added Hariri.

NETANYAHU, HEGEL AND THE JEWISH SPIRIT

BY GILAD ATZMON

TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2010 AT 8:21AM GILAD ATZMON

“Spirit does not toss itself about in the external play of chance occurrences; on the contrary, it is that which determines history absolutely, and it stands firm against the chance occurrences which it dominates and exploits for its own purpose”. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831)

PM Netanyahu was quoted by the Israeli Ynet last week saying that the “whole of Israel would be surrounded by a fence eventually”. According to another report he said “there will be no choice but to fence Israel in on all directions”. What Netanyahu means by ‘fence’ and ‘all directions’ may be left open for the time being. However, PM Netanyahu has managed to bring to light an Hegelian interpretation of the notion of ‘Jewish spirit’ as a relentless inclination towards segregation and isolation. It is the tendency to keep oneself apart that determines and shapes Jewish collectivism. Whether it is the Zionists and their walls, the Orthodox and their Kosher universe or even Jewish anti Zionists and their racially segregated miniature activist cells, somehow every form of Jewish political engagement is there to set the Jews apart.

“For Hegel” says Francis Fukuyama, “the contradictions that drive history exist first of all in the realm of human consciousness, i.e. on the level of ideas”. It is reasonable to argue that from an Hegelian perspective, all human behaviour and human history is rooted in a prior state of consciousness. For Hegelian thinkers such as Alexandre Kojève, understanding the underlying processes of history requires understanding the realm of consciousness for it is consciousness that will ultimately remake the material world into a mirror image of its own spirit. In short it is the spirit that would eventually shape the material reality as a mirror of itself. Accordingly, the Jewish state, could be realised as a reflection of the Jewish spirit for it is the Jewish spirit that shapes the reality of the Jewish state.

For Hegel history ended in 1806. For him mankind reached its end with the  French and American Revolutions. Whether Hegel was correct or completely deluded in his reading of human history and mankind’s evolution is a matter for an ongoing philosophical debate. The Jewish state, however, can be easily interpreted in Hegelian terms as the ‘end of Jewish history’. Zionism presented a dream, it set itself a serious challenge: it promised to transform the Jew into a ‘civilised and authentic human being’. It vowed to make the Jews people like all other people. Zionism was in fact a call of defiance against the hitherto Jewish spirit. Yet, the current state of Israel proves beyond doubt that the spirit has defeated the Zionist proclaimed fantasy. The will to be ‘fenced from every possible direction’ prevailed. The aspiration to be ‘people amongst people’ is a matter for historical enquiry, it has no support on the ground whatsoever. The spirit won over the rational ideological fantasy.

As tragic as it may sound, it would be almost impossible to reflect on Jewish history without Israel. It would be impossible to understand how  one people  managed to bring so much hate on themselves. Israel is, no doubt, a unique social experiment in Jewish history. It is in the Jewish State where the people of the book have managed to liberate themselves of any inhibitions. It is in the Jewish state where “kosher” bus lines feature  “separate seating for men and women”.  It is in Israel where Jews live their spirit to the max. It is where Jews celebrate their cultural, material, spiritual and ideological symptoms. But it is also a place where Jews live happily on stolen land while oppressing and starving the indigenous population. As it happens, in the Jewish state Israelis celebrate their national ‘home coming’, and they do it all behind fences and at the expense of the Palestinians.

In Hegelian terms Israel is a product of Jewish spirit. Yet, Israel is NOT a representation of Judaism as Israel is not a Halachic State*. It is not the state of the Jews as the majority of Jews prefer to live amongst the Goyim. However, Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish state’. It is the place where Jews freely explore the meaning and pride of being Jewish. Hence, the reality of the Israeli state and its categorical ethical failure leads us towards an Hegelian critical confrontation with the notions of Jewish consciousness, ideology (Jewishness) and spirit.

The failure of Zionism to erect a civilised humanist Jew is an accepted fact. It instead managed to raise an extremely brutal version of the ‘Diaspora’ tribal subject it aimed to amend. Needless to say that Israeli war crimes are not an isolated rare event, they are actually institutional and committed by a popular army (IDF) that is following orders given by a democratically elected government. As if this is not enough, the Israeli crimes are supported by the vast majority of the Israelis. The fact that at the time of the Gaza war 94% of the Israeli Jewish populationsupported the genocidal crime is more than enough to incriminate the entire Israeli society as a collective. But it goes further, the Israeli crime is supported institutionally by world Jewry. It would be intelligible to argue that from an Hegelian perspective Israel is the end of Jewish history as much as the French revolution was the Hegelian end of history of mankind. Israel is the materialisation of the Jewish consciousness.

Netanyahu’s recent admission that Israel will be fenced from every possible direction is far more than mere symbolism. It is there to expose the solid kernel at the heart of the Jewish collective tribal desire. As Hegel suggests, it is “spirit that determines history” or  to be precise and concrete, it is the Jewish spirit i.e. the inclination towards isolationism  that determines Jewish history and the reality of Israeli barbarism.

Listening to Netanyahu and looking at the reality of Israel makes it obviously clear that rather than the Goyim, it is actually the Jewish spirit that imposed the Ghetto on the Jew. Emancipation of  European Jewry provided Jews with an opportunity to leave tribalism behind. Needless to say that many Jews bought into the idea and found their way into the crowd. Many Jews had become voices for humanist causes and thoughts. However, many others decided to maintain a spiritual partition. In order to do so they invented a phantasmic cultural ethos. They may have even invented ‘victimhood’ and ‘anti Semitism’ just to justify their state of self imposed alienation. Observing Israel and any other form of Jewish politics makes it too easy to grasp how and where it all goes wrong.

As things stand there is no easy remedy for the secular Jew for there is no safe haven for Jewish secular collectivism or identity that fits into the notion of humanism or universalism. If Jews insist upon being secular and humanist they may have to drop their ‘J’ prefix and to operate as ordinary people. This is the only alternative to Zionism and it can also be a beginning of a wonderful friendship (with others as well as nature).

* The concept of a Halachic state refers to a theocratic state based upon Jewish Law.



I am the Resistance

neverbeforecampaign

Whenever there is injustice, there are people fighting it with every possible means. We have seen it so many times before: the oppressed rise up, the oppressor dehumanizes them calling them such names as “terrorists”, “saboteurs”, “death loving” extremists… It is only normal that the oppressor will always lie to justify his actions and its crimes.What is different in the case of Palestine, is that the Israeli regime has built an effective media and communications networks and campaigns to distort the image of the Palestinian resistance, and that a large portion of the world has believed the Israeli line and hence adopted it.It is our duty to remember and remind the world that the Palestinian freedom fighter is a man, a woman, like any other. He loves his family. She loves her country. They seek a better future. They are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of justice and freedom. They waited for the world to lift the blatant injustice that has befallen them since 1948. They expected the world to understand when they took up arms to lift this injustice themselves.Now, they don’t care what anyone else calls them. They do not seek anyone’s permission, just like any resistance movement. They believe that their cause will be triumphant because it is a cause for justice and humanity. They are merely fulfilling their duty to make the day of justice in Palestine come sooner. So should we.(Most of the photos used in this video are by Mr. Ahmad Mesleh, Palestine)www.uruknet.info?p=62233

more about “I am the Resistance “, posted with vodpod

‘West using Israel as proxy to dominate Mideast’

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slams the US, Britain and Israel for what he calls instigating another war in the region.

Speaking to thousands of people in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, Ahmadinejad said that the fabrication of Israel and the sending of arms to the Middle East were aimed at dominating the region and maintaining Western interests.

“The Zionist regime [of Israel] has been fabricated for the sake of dominating the Middle East region,” he said. “Realizing the fact that they cannot achieve their goal through deception, they have resorted to military expeditions, launching wars and occupation.”

President Ahmadinejad said that even the 9/11 attacks are believed by many experts to have been a US-Israeli plot to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Iranian president slammed Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Yemen war, saying that Riyadh had better used its weapons against the Zionists.

“The arms sold by the West to Saudi Arabia are being used against the people of the region and Muslims instead of protecting them against the Zionists,” Ahmadinejad said, urging the Saudi government to contribute to the establishment of peace in Yemen.

The Iranian president also urged Yemeni parties to resolve the crisis through negotiation, be wary of the plots hatched by the enemies and protect the region from insecurity.

“Insecurity will help the arrogant powers of the world to interfere in regional affairs and we should hamper the opportunistic objectives of the enemies.”

The president also urged the Pakistani government and nation to maintain their unity and be vigilant in the face of US plots.

“The US is only thinking of its own interests and the Pakistani people and government should not trust the United States,” President Ahmadinejad said.

Addressing the global arrogance, the Iranian president said that they have faced a deadlock and the people of Iran and the region have today realized their schemes and will resist their conspiracies.

“You have no choice but to end your inhumane actions and respect the rights of the Iranian people and the region,” he said, emphasizing that they would not be able to harm the people of Iran in any manner.