KUWAIT – Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour underlined that the solution in Syria is internal and cannot be solved through foreign interference in the country’s domestic affairs because this will hinder the solution and does not deepen dialogue rather it complicates the situation, expressing hope that Syria would overcome the crisis.
The Lebanese Minister told al-Anbaa Kuwaiti Newspaper on Monday that the Syrian leadership did not refuse reforms, rather it accepted them from the beginning and reforms cannot be achieved out of the blue, but rather fulfilled through dialogue.
He added “the events taking place in Syria concern us to a great extent because Syria and Lebanon are neighboring brotherly countries which are connected through geographic, economic, social and humanitarian ties and there are common things between them i.e. stability and security….security and stability in Syria reflect positively or negatively on Lebanon.”
Regarding Lebanese Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn’s statements on the infiltration of al-Qaeda members from Lebanon into Syria, Mansour underlined that Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel did not contradict Minister Ghosn regarding his information about al-Qaeda members, saying that the Defense Minister did not talk about the existence of al-Qaeda in Lebanon, but rather about members crossing borders between Syria and Lebanon.
In a similar context, former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha said that Syria is a resistant country and it protects resistance, adding ” I advice not to try Syria in a military confrontation nor in imposing a no-fly zone because it will fight for its people and for its national sovereignty.”
Samaha pointed out that Syria accepted to receive the Arab observers and they have to prove that they are not biased and that they will relay the situation known by the Syrians through their report.
He clarified that the Syrian people, under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, reject to deal with those who call themselves the opposition abroad; the latter presented credentials to Israel. On a relevant note, Lebanese Liberation and Development Bloc member MP Ayoub Hamid called for not interfering in Syria’s internal affairs or using Lebanon as a platform against Syria, recalling that Syria supported Lebanon during its hardest times, particularly during the Israeli aggressions on it and during its internal ordeals.
The New York Timesputs this question to the GOP contenders. Sophistry ensues. “Under what circumstances, if any, would the Constitution permit the president to authorize the targeted killing of a United States citizen who has not been sentenced to death by a court,” the paper asks. Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, and Romney take the same line: “Under wartime circumstances” says Newt; “If such an individual is engaged on a battlefield,” says Huntsman; “Due process permits the use of deadly force against all enemy combatants, including citizens,” Romney avers; and “The President would be so authorized … where a citizen has joined or is associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities against the United States” according to Perry. Only Ron Paul describes the conditions in which extrajudicial targeted killing of Americans is permitted as “none.”
The others engage in Orwellian obfuscation, claiming that “battlefield” circumstances permit this — as if the situation the Times is asking about is one in which some American terrorist is shooting away at U.S. troops in combat or about to detonate a bomb on American soil. But that isn’t “targeted” killing. The practice Huntsman, Gingrich, Romney, and Perry — and President Obama — defend includes the assassination of Americans who are, in Perry’s words, only “associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities.” In fact, the power claimed by these men goes far beyond that since, again, this is extrajudicial killing, in which there is no obligation for the executive to provide evidence to a judge or anyone else that the murdered man is guilty of what Uncle Sam accuses him of.
Stripped of the evasions, what they are saying is that you or anyone else can be killed if the president thinks — or claims to think — that you are “associated” with “a nation or group” that is engaged in hostilities with the United States. Janet Reno would approve. This doctrine would have saved her some crocodile tears over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians at Waco. Even the unarmed women and children there, after all, were “associated” with a group engaged in hostilities with the United States.
Needless to say, there are Americans who join extremist groups, but existing law-enforcement powers and military doctrines already permit killing them when they are actually engaged in acts of deadly violence. The Republicans’ invocations of a “battlefield” might sound reassuring, until you realize that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, according to two of its supporters, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), designates even the U.S. itself as a battlefield. The whole world is one.
I have trouble taking these claims to more-than-royal power seriously; more precisely, I have trouble ascribing good faith to the intellectuals who try to justify an omnipotent presidency. But it’s a nominally free country, so let them have their say, in elections as well as op-ed pages and the corridors of our think tanks and universities. It seems to me, though, that we ought to hear from those who believe in a limited and law-bound executive as well. Ron Paul shouldn’t be alone in this. The public needs to know what’s at stake here and just how few political leaders think there should be any restraints at all on the power of the president to kill.
On 2 January 2009 at around 14:30 an Israeli drone fired a missile at an open area in Qarara village, close to Khan Yunis. The missile struck and killed two brothers, Mohammed (12) and Abed Rabbo (9) al-Astal, and their cousin, Abdul Sattar Walid al-Astal (11) while they were playing and eating sugar canes in the land.
“I was at home when I heard an explosion that was close to our area. An Israeli drone was flying in the sky above us at that moment.” Eyad al-Astal recalls. “Approximately ten minutes later, my brother Ibrahim (28) came to my house and told me that my two sons and their cousin were killed by an Israeli shell. I rapidly left the house and headed to the scene about 250 meters west of my house. There I saw a deep hole. Traces of blood and fragments of flesh were still there.”
Three years have passed since Eyad lost his two sons but he still carries vivid memories with him. “Every day and every minute feels like the moment when I lost my sons. In everything there is a memory of them. I miss them all the time.”
Eyad tries to describe what the life of his family is like without Mohammed and Abed Rabbo: “Our lives have been very difficult since they were killed. Every time I see another boy their age, I remember my sons. I still cannot look at their photos, it is too painful.” He says; “I always feel like crying but I try not to. My wife, Jawaher, cries everyday but tries to hide her tears from me. She does not want to add salt to my wounds. My wife always wants to go to our sons’ graves with her mother, but I don’t. I only went once and don’t want to go again. I can’t face the sight of their graves.”
Besides Mohammed and Abed Rabbo, Eyad and his wife have five daughters and two sons. Mohammed and Abed Rabbo were the oldest children and their siblings were either very young or not born yet at the time of their death. The youngest child was born one and a half years after the war and will have no memories at all. “When the children ask us where their brothers are we tell them that they were killed, martyred, and are in heaven now”, says Eyad.
The memory of his sons is at the tip of Eyad’s tongue. “My son Khaled looks exactly like his brother Mohammed and I often find myself saying ‘Mohammed!’ when I actually mean to call Khaled.” In order to keep going, Eyad tries to stay busy all the time, finding some distraction by meeting people and working as a mason.
Since the death of his sons Eyad is tormented by worries and fears for the safety of his other children. Before the death of Mohammed and Abed Rabbo he allowed his children to go anywhere at anytime. Even when there were explosions and shooting was heard in the area. After the incident he became very afraid for his children and he wants to keep them inside. “I am afraid that anything would happen to them, especially for my son Khaled, who is now in the first grade. From the moment he leaves the house I worry that something could happen to him. Every day he walks to school, which is 1 kilometer away from our home. I know education is important, otherwise I would forbid him to go, out of my fear.”
The children themselves are aware that their brothers were killed by a drone: the same type of drone they often hear and see flying above themselves. Eyad explains that “when they hear a drone they are too afraid to go outside. ‘The drone will bomb me if I go out’, is what they say.”
The area where Mohammed and Abed Rabbo were killed was an open area approximately three kilometres away from the border with Israel. “The children were used to playing in that area. Our piece of land is close to it. It is an agricultural residential area, far from any hostilities,” Eyad explains.
Eyad is sceptical about the future, given the continuing impunity. “The Israelis disregard our rights. They kill our children and bulldoze our lands and no one will hold them accountable,” he says. “I expect the Israeli court to reject our complaint. I can even imagine them killing me together with my other children. However, I want to hope that the complaint would have some result.”
PCHR submitted a criminal complaint to the Israeli authorities on behalf of the al-Astal family on 23 June 2009. To-date, no response has been received.
Traditional farming methods are crucial for protecting a number of threatened bird species in the developing world, including bustards, cranes, ibises and vultures, a study has found.
Livestock grazing and features associated with arable farming — such as hedgerows — create environmental conditions that certain birds currently depend on for food, shelter and breeding, the authors report.
But as industrial farming methods eliminate these habitats, these species are threatened with extinction, said Hugh Wright, a researcher in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, and lead author of the study, published in Conservation Letters earlier this month (5 December).
“There really is no hope for these species if industrial farming continues unchecked,” he told SciDev.Net.
Although reintroducing or mimicking traditional farming techniques has had success in conserving wildlife in Europe, “conservation in the developing world has always focused on pristine forest ecosystems and has paid little attention to where farming might be beneficial,” Wright said.
The study found 29 bird species threatened by the decline of traditional agriculture in developing countries. This number could be much higher if all organisms, rather than just birds, are considered, as evidence from Europe suggests that traditional farming also benefits reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and even plants, Wright said.
Farmers can benefit too from protecting biodiversity since it helps to justify traditional agriculture and could prevent big agri-businesses from forcing farmers off their land, he added. Also, by offering farmers economic incentives to continue these beneficial practices, governments can ensure that conservation and development move forward together.
Tim Benton, professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, agreed that traditional agricultural methods are a valuable conservation tool, but said that adopting techniques aimed at saving a few iconic species can disadvantage farmers.
“Applying low-intensity farming instead of industrial methods often pits livelihoods against conservation, and can impose limits on a region’s development,” he said.
Instead, he said that “land sparing” — where some areas are intensively farmed while others are left primarily for conservation — can lead to more wildlife and better crop yields.
There is no one strategy, but a “middle ground” that combines land sparing and traditional farming methods to suit local conditions could be the best conservation strategy, he added.
Wright agreed that a mixed approach can maximise biodiversity. “You need to assess which species you have, how feasible it is to protect them, what it will cost and social issues as well before coming up with a conservation strategy for an area,” he said.
Demobilized soldiers will be able to study Asian cooking this year at the government’s expense, as part of an effort to reduce the number of foreign workers employed as cooks in Asian restaurants by training Israeli professionals to replace them.
It’s shocking for two reasons – one is the xenophobia that is rising to astonishing heights in Israel: not even the cooks of foreign cuisine can be foreign (I’ll come back to this) – but because of what it says about how Israel is using US military aid at a time of drastic cuts and austerity for American citizens. Haaretz says:
The cooking courses are estimated to cost about NIS 4.5 million a year, about NIS 1 million of which will come from the Defense Ministry budget.
That’s a few hundred thousands dollars – small change in the grand scheme of things – but not for the Israeli soldiers who will enroll in the course:
Six courses are scheduled for this year in the north, center and south, with a minimum of 25 students in each course.
Some recently demobilized soldiers taking the course may receive aid for housing and living expenses for the first few months. Though the NIS 30,000 tuition [about $8,000] is fully subsidized, students will have to pay NIS 1,800 each for clothing and equipment.
Is this what US aid is being used for?
Everyone knows that the US gives several billion dollars a year of taxpayer aid to Israel’s military – with few strings attached. The US in effect subsidizes sushi-making courses for Israelis, but at what price?
Last Autumn, as Congress was looking for ways to cut the US federal deficit by cutting spending and not raising taxes, Congress chose to cut $733 million from the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program – a move which, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities would see 700,000 poor women and young children in the United States lose access to a basic nutrition program this year that has been shown to improve child outcomes.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers will be getting all-expenses paid sushi courses.
Recently Deborah Lipstadt – a leading Holocaust scholar and supporter of Israel – lashed out in a Haaretz interview against “over-the-top pandering” to Israel by US politicians. Lipstadt also said that abuse of the Holocaust by American politicians seeking the favor of Israel’s supporters amounted to “soft-core denial” of the Holocaust.
Lipstadt’s comments were directed at Republicans – who are having presidential primary elections unlike the Democrats – but could have just as easily been aimed at leading Democratic Party politicians as well.
One can only agree with Lipstadt that such pandering is “unhealthy” – so much so that we have absurdities such as today’s news: US-subsidized sushi-making courses for Israeli soldiers while American infants are to see cuts in nutrition and no one has the guts to object.
“Now that we’ve got the curry, is there really any reason for them to stay?”
As I mentioned, the xenophobia inherent in almost every aspect of Israeli policy – even to the point of objecting to sushi chefs from countries that invented sushi has reached the point where it out does satire.
It reminded me of a sketch from the BBC satirical show Not The Nine O’Clock News from the early 1980s. In it Rowan Atkinson (later of Mr. Bean fame) plays a politician of Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative Party. Watch the whole sketch because you will see that what was political satire thirty years ago has now become real political discourse on a whole range of subjects.
In one line, Atkinson – satirizing anti-immigrant sentiments – says “Now, a lot of immigrants are Indians and Pakistanis, for instance, and I like curry. But now that we’ve got the recipe, is there really any need for them to stay?” The same now goes for sushi in Israel.
Oh, and don’t forget, that last year, just after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the reaction of Israel’s Ynet was, “Israelis fear sushi shortage after quake.” And here’s the Rowan Atkinson sketch.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) declared its intention to demolish hundreds of Palestinian homes and buildings in area C under its control in the occupied West Bank and to retain illegal settlement outposts.
Haaretz newspaper said the Israeli prosecution bureau pledged to respond to petitions filed by Palestinian residents with the Israeli higher court against demolition of their property by razing hundreds of buildings and structures including schools without delay.
The IOA prevents the Palestinian natives from building or getting licenses to build in area C, so they find themselves forced to set up even temporary structures and tents because they know that Israel will not let them live peacefully in their lands without harassment and demolitions.
If the IOA and its prosecution bureau fulfilled their pledge to respond to Palestinian petitions, thousands of Palestinians would be homeless and 32 schools would be knocked down depriving about 1,000 Palestinian children from education.
For its part, the Israeli ministerial committee for legislation discussed in its meeting on Sunday a draft law aimed at preventing the evacuation of random illegal settlement outposts built by Jewish settlers without permits in the West Bank.
Haaretz said the leaders of these settlement outposts and right-wing Knesset members pressured this ministerial committee to approve and support the draft law.
In the morning of the 30th of December three members of the International Solidarity Movement and one other international were walking the streets of Nabi Saleh when two military jeeps drew up and stopped next to them. A group of approximately ten soldiers jumped out of the jeeps grabbing two of the international volunteers, forcing them into the jeeps as they drew away. Inside the car they were told they were under arrest for disobeying orders, stating that when they had instructed the internationals to stop, the internationals had fled and disobeyed. The ISM volunteers found this strange as they were the ones who actually stopped, and those who ran away were not arrested. The arrested were taken to a military-base where all their belongings were taken from them. They were then interrogated by a policeman. In this interrogation the charges were changed, shifting to allegations against the volunteers that they had entered a closed military-area, which also was strange as soldiers had blatantly let them into the area just an hour earlier.
After some hours waiting in the military base, they were handcuffed and driven to a police-station where they were also shackled. Once again they were interrogated by another policeman, this time for disobeying orders to stop when the soldiers supposedly wished to inform the volunteers that they were in a closed military-area.
After the interrogation they were given a paper written in Hebrew to sign. It was translated orally by a soldier. They refused to sign it and instead they were given another paper that said that they could not go to Nabi Saleh for 15 days.
Afterwards they were released without charges. The policemen asked them to tell Europe how well the Israelis had treated them.
Rabbi Yaacov Perin said at Israeli mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein’s funeral that “one million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” A less blatant – but still gratuitously reprehensible – representation of this idea appears to have found its way into the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
I seem to consistently find myself getting into disputes over whether the daily Haaretz is a zionist-biased source. “They have left-wing columnists like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass,” my interlocutors point out. They also carry pieces by right-wing settlers like Israel Harel. When reporting a story concerning the IDF, they often reproduce the IDF spokesperson’s claims uncritically as the headline.
I’ve just seen a sub-heading on Haaretz that nearly made my eyes pop out.
As Haaretz itself reported, two Palestinian fighters were killed by the Israeli air force on Tuesday, and another one was injured, in a serious condition. According to Israeli army propaganda they were going to fire a rocket. Haaretz even points out the Israeli army’s own admission that:
in contrast to previous incidents in which the IDF launched a retaliatory attack in response to rocket fire on Israel, in this case the militant group was identified well in advance and the attack was planned and carried out before the militants were able to launch any rockets toward Israel
I.e. they were assassinated for suspected pre-crime, “well in advance”.
But, incredibly, Haaretz wants to tell us that today’s light injury of one Israeli soldier is “the first significant incident in the strip after few months of relative calm.” The light injury of an Israeli is a “significant incident”, the death of two Palestinians and serious injury of one more is… well, they don’t even get a mention. It seems like Haaretz has internalized the idea that one is a member of God’s chosen people; the others are cannon fodder to be snuffed out without a raised eyebrow.
This is, as I hope any sane person can see, outright racism. Yes, by the standards of other Israeli newspapers (e.g. the Jerusalem Post) Haaretz is comparatively progressive. But they still dehumanize Palestinians, still base their choice of vocabulary, the angle, of their story on the implicit entrenched assumption that an Israeli soldier has some essential right to be in the Gaza strip, that he’s a real person, so when he is lightly injured it is significant, and that the Palestinians have no agency, no personhood; they exist only as a foil for the Israeli army’s misbehaviour; absolutely they have no right to defend themselves so when an Israeli jet kills two of them and wrecks the body of another, cosmic balance is maintained. This is the way things are meant to be, the Israelis bomb; the Palestinians get bombed. Nothing amiss.
Haaretz’ decision to adopt this illogical and gratuitously unfair narrative raises grave concerns about its trustworthiness as a source for news stories concerning the Palestinians.
Due to recent events of alienation and/or expulsion of members of Palestine Solidarity Movement, including Palestinians, it became more and more evident that there are elements in the Solidarity Movement who continue to stir up friction and splits amongst activists, that leads to alienation of many genuine activists and even exiled Palestinians.
This state of affairs should raise alarm to anyone interested in Justice and Peace, that means anyone who works to put an end to decades of Palestinian suffering, and its slow genocide, and to anyone who understands that such high objectives require promoting the Liberation of Palestine.
It is also apparent that many of these destabilizing elements are simultaneously members of OTHER organizations, which membership approval operates through exclusivity, and restricted only to people of Jewish background.
Moreover, it is manifest that many of these Jewish-only organizations declare publicly that their prime motive for their activism is out of concern for the welfare of “Israel” and the “Israeli society”. Worse, some of these organizations do not even conceal that their criticism of “Israel” is done out of “love” and loyalty to this criminal entity. Simply put, they criticise and condemn “Israel” primarily to protect and help it thrive and survive.
This kind of blind allegiance and deep loyalty to “Israel” is of course expected from and omnipresent amongst hyper-Zionists and their circles, but it is quite disturbing to find the same loyalty amongst “supporters of Palestine” of Jewish background. It is also interesting to notice that even hyper-Zionists, through their think tanks, have recently arrived at the same conclusion that their counterparts, Jewish anti-Zionists, have known for decades; namely open criticism of “Israel” IS the best way to defend it. As we can see for example, in Mick Davis’s article: “Open debate is our best way of defending Israel in the diaspora,” The Jewish Chronicle, 17 June 2010. The article also appears on the website of the Jewish Chronicle under the title “Defending Israel in the diaspora”.
Through my research and extensive work, it became evident that the prime allegiance of many Jewish anti-Zionist organizations is not to Palestine or the Palestinians; their loyalty is to “Israeli” Jews and to the artificially manufactured “Israeli” society. It also seems clear that the prime motive for the activism of many members of such organizations is the concern for the welfare and future of “Israelis” and the perpetuation of their colonial society.
Factual and thorough scrutiny of these organizations invariably indicates that their primary concern and main focus are the following:
How to best consolidate and reinforce a good, secure and thriving future for the INVENTED *** “nation” of “Israel”, on the Historical Land STOLEN from its ancestral inhabitants, the Palestinians;
How to best disculpate the Jewish communities worldwide from their responsibility of decades of financial, political, moral and even military support of their “beacon of light”, “Israel”;
How to best further the interests of such invented “nation”, after the finalization of their imposed facts on the grounds, and getting rid of the banner of Zionism;
How to best ensure and secure the permanent presence of an invading settler society after grabbing most of the LAND of Palestine by wars of terror and conquest;
How to best pacify and allure Palestinians into accepting foreign violent invaders as rightful co-owners of Palestine and future “partners”;
How to best promote “Israeli” settler society as “liberal peace-loving”, whose main concern would be to live in peace and security, but who just happened to be “unfortunately” plagued with corrupt leadership;
How to best conceal that their garment of humanism and thin veneer of ethics is directed principally at “saving Israelis from themselves” and thereby their own reputation, rather than unconditional and altruistic protection of the dispossessed, terrorised, besieged and occupied Palestinians, and their moral cause of Liberation.
How best to divert the limited energy of activism into supporting the “Israeli peace camp”, “Israeli” organizations, and “Israeli” individuals and treat as angels and heroes those who exhibit a minuscule dose of normal human behaviour;
It is glaringly evident that the above listed motives and aims, do not fully hold the Palestinians’ welfare or interest at heart. They are neither intertwined, nor even the slightest convergent with Palestinian aims, who are mainly Liberationist.
What is troubling, is that motives and objectives of such Jewish-only groups, as listed above, also stand in stark contradiction with the Nuremberg Principles, especially the sixth principlewhich happens to have been established in the aftermath of WW2 crimes, and these crimes are still instrumentalized as a main pretext for the occupation of Palestine, in-spite of the fact that Palestinians had no connection whatsoever with WW2 crimes.
Arguably, standards of moral fiber and legal consistency, are ignored or at best stretched ad absurdum by members of Jewish-only organizations who claim to stand with Palestine.
Those of us who venture into the necessary exposure of this inconvenient reality, are subjected to brutal – and often illicit forms of attacks by the enforcers of Zionist narrative, encroaching on strictly domestic matters of government, including the judicial administration, to strangle our respective freedoms.
Dual-loyalty to two opposed parties, one being the torturer, and the other being his victim, is in practice a myth. Thus it is not surprising that those involved operate in secrecy, in the exclusion of “the other side”.
While non-Jewish candidates are barred from becoming members, by definition membership to Jewish-only organizations is open to ANY person from Jewish background. This makes it piece of cake for Sayanim, Mossad agents, Shin Bet and Zionist sympathisers to effortlessly infiltrate, manipulate and steer such organizations. No wonder then, that so many Jewish-only groups who claim to be “pro-Palestinian” appear to be more interested with aims more in tune with securing the presence of “Israelis” in Palestine, than the restoration of Palestinian sovereignty.
This brings us to the core problem: while those members of Jewish only organizations have the privilege (and rightly so) to be members and never excluded from pro-Palestinian organizations, the opposite is not true. i.e we are faced with an alarming phenomenon whereby, Palestinians and non-Jewish individuals are systematically excluded from participating, having an input, debating, voting, influencing or even being informed about or simply being aware with the inner dynamics and the type and topics of discussions that take place inside such Jewish only organizations.
The outcome of such asymmetrical and non-mutual arrangement is what we have seen lately, matters are discussed amongst these exclusive groups, decisions are taken, and then the pro-Palestinian organizations are approached, persuaded, pressured or coerced to adhere to those propositions and motions.
The secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding that type of activities is allowing inside the solidarity movement people who are not necessary or entirely genuine supporters of Palestine, “fair-weather friends”, people who are in essence more interested in the long term “Israeli” interest, than genuine support of Palestine. At best, their claimed care for the suffering of the oppressed society come secondary.
Signing petitions, giving out leaflets, stating words of support, throwing some crumbs to Palestinians, accompanied with patronizing pats on the shoulders, believing that they have done their humanistic “duty” of siding with justice, while simultaneously continuing to aim and work for securing the right of the invading “Israelis” to practice their “self determination” in someone else Homeland, reflects no doubt ethical blindness and almost moral bankruptcy. Imposing on Palestine forced marriage with a rapist monster is an obscenity.
Such ethical inconsistency of crying with the victim while protecting the criminal, is a regrettable case of hypocrisy and self deception.
Throughout the Palestinian movement, recent events reveal that some people on board of our movement deleterious to the Palestinian cause and some probably are disingenuous. Thus, such unhealthy, asymmetrical and exclusionary structures are indeed destabilizing and crippling the efficiency of Palestine Solidarity Movement, an efficiency vital to a Palestinian population under threat of annihilation… these are not trivial matters.
As a matter of principle, we refuse to apply the same exclusionary methods amongst pro Palestinian organization and will never resort to such racist exclusiveness. We cannot continue to claim to be humanist anti-racist while accepting simultaneously, the exclusionary nature applied by such organizations, especially in the light of compromised loyalty, and what we know about the sinister Mossad activities and the ease with which they infiltrate such groups.
It is therefore essential to crack open the shells of exclusion and secrecy, wherein topics of discussions are about “unfavourable” information to filter, which debates to “allow” and where to draw boundaries, and sinister attacks against activists who might not conform to “permissible” lines of discourse are cooked.
Under such conditions, it is imperative for the Palestine Solidarity movement to introduce a regulation that will allow room for transparency and reciprocity. Failure to address this issue would cause the continuation and aggravation of the crippling shift that has already befallen the movement.
.
Whereas some Jewish-anti Zionist supporters call for a two state solution with a thriving and secured Israel they love, whereby they actively support the theft of 80% of Palestine;
Whereas some others insist that the only solution should be a one secular state, one member one vote, whereby they establish a precondition that would not only exculpate the occupiers from any responsibility or blame but also grant the occupier lands that do not belong to them, rights that they have not earned and protection that they don’t deserve.
Whereas, many of those Jewish “anti-Zionists” are full members of the Palestinian movements and have the privilege to be part of and to vote in any organization they desire;
Whereas, they continue to exclude Palestinians and other non-Jewish individuals from being part of and voting in their Jewish-only organizations;
Whereas, Zionist methods of false accusations of anti-Semitism / Holocaust denial are used to neutralize and exclude, or push away certain members of the Solidarity Movement, including Palestinian refugees! (a crass mirror of the ethnic cleansing happening in Palestine);
Whereas, Jewish anti-Zionist individuals and groups have the right to vote and have the weight to even tilt the vote, have access to the minutes of meetings and have the privilege of being heard and their opinions respected in the broader solidarity movement;
Whereas, such affiliated Jewish groups do generally restrict their membership to Jews, hence barring non-Jewish persons from participating, or from having the right of access to their meetings as an observer, let alone from a vote within their tightly knit fellowship;
Whereas, the fundamental element of trust about the authenticity of intentions, about motivation, aims, and actions of such groups, has been profoundly shaken;
It appears evident that:
To put an end to this predicament, the exclusionary nature of such organizations must be revoked, and the fair and mutual openness to membership without discrimination against race, culture or religion must be requested.
The Solidarity Movement needs to have a system of disclosure of political affiliation of its prospective members, making it a contractual obligation of disclosure of their membership to any hitherto Jewish-only organization, or to any other organization linked to either the Palestinian cause, or to the occupiers of Palestine aka “Israelis”.
Representatives of the Solidarity Movements must have the mutual right to have access to and to be fairly represented in the insofar exclusive Jewish-only organizations, in equal numbers, and have rights to vote in these organizations.
To avoid any further mistrust, friction, crippling or fragmentation, reciprocity and mutual open membership is the way forward.
Tens of thousands of children have been sexually abused in Dutch Catholic institutions over the past 65 years by priests and other Roman Catholic religious figures, a new report says.
The report, which is based on a survey of more than 34,000 people, said it could identify 800 Catholic clergy and other church employees guilty of sexually abusing children in the 40 years from 1945 and that more than 100 perpetrators were still alive.
According to the probe, the abuse ranged from “unwanted sexual advances” to rape, while the number of victims who suffered abuse in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000.
Dutch bishops apologized to the victims and said they were filled with “shame and sorrow” over the Commission’s findings, which was led by a former education minister Wim Deetman.
“The Dutch Catholic Church knew what was happening and tried to resolve the problem,” but the appropriate actions were never taken, Deetman told a press conference in The Hague.
Recently the Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by numerous revelations of child sexual abuse at the hands of priests around the world.
Investigations have shown that clerics have sexually abused children in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium in the past decades and that the church has often covered up the abuse, protecting pedophile priests.
In 2004, a criminal inquiry established there were 4,400 paedophile priests in the United States between 1950 and 2002, putting the number of their child victims at 11,000.
Ireland, one of the most staunchly Catholic countries in Europe, has seen a series of crises, leading Pope Benedict XVI to publicly rebuke its bishops for a “breakdown of trust”.
A total of 14,500 Irish children are reported to have been victims of abuse by clergy.
By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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