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First Lebanon war, Oslo Accords missing from Israeli textbooks

By Or Kashti| Haaretz | June 25, 2010

The first Lebanon war and the Oslo Accords are missing from Israeli history textbooks, Haaretz has learned, while more recent events, such as the signing of the peace agreement with Jordan, are included.

The Education Ministry said in response that “naturally, not all historic events could be included in the curriculum.”

Some 10 days ago, public school history teachers received a handbook sent by the director of history education at the Education Ministry, Michael Yaron. The handbook, titled “Subjects for the High School History Curriculum” sets down the topics history teachers are expected to cover over the three years of high school.

History lessons in high school are divided into two units, both mandatory for all students. The second unit is further divided into the following two groupings: Nazism, anti-Semitism, World War II and the Holocaust; and building the State of Israel in the Middle East. The latter grouping includes all Israeli conflicts from the struggle for statehood to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, followed by a section on the “peace agreements between Israel, Egypt and Jordan.”

In the past, the Education Ministry generally avoided teaching recent history, arguing that it takes 20 to 30 years to arrive at a historical perspective suitable for teaching young people. However, skipping over the first Lebanon war and the Oslo Accords, but including the peace accords with Jordan as well as “Jewish immigration into Israel during the last 30 years of the 20th century,” appears to represent a deviation from the rule.

“The Education Ministry doesn’t like [to address] controversial issues like the first Lebanon war or the Oslo Accords,” a veteran history teacher told Haaretz. “It’s not necessarily political, it’s more of a desire to avoid confrontation and keep things quiet.”

“This is wrong, even pedagogically,” the teacher continued. “The so-called sensitive subjects are the most relevant ones and the most interesting to students.”

‘Mapping out reality’

“Professionally speaking, this is a ridiculous and unreasonable decision,” said professor Hannah Yablonka of Ben-Gurion University, who chairs the ministry’s advisory committee on history education. “The peace agreement with Jordan didn’t appear in a vacuum, but as a result of the Oslo Accords. But it’s more than that, these issues are existentially important. Students need to know what the Palestinian Authority is. This is part of mapping out reality.”

As for the Lebanon war, she said, “28 years offers enough perspective on this particular event, especially if later events are taught in schools. There’s no professional justification for these decisions.”

An Education Ministry official rejected the claims that the decision to exclude these subjects was political. “A professional external committee staffed comprised of the best historians put together the curriculum from which these guidelines are derived, and which was published two years ago,” he said. “There were plenty of arguments and deliberations within the committee before they agreed on a program that took into account not just historic events, but the fewer number of teaching hours allocated to history lessons.”

The chairman of the committee, Professor Yisrael Bartal of the Hebrew University, could not be reached for comment.

The Education Ministry also released a statement in which it said that “naturally, the curriculum cannot include all historical subjects and events. The program includes the formative historic events of the Jewish people, which have led to the establishment of the Jewish Zionist state and which continue to remain relevant today.”

June 25, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Kenneth O’Keefe on BBC’s Hard Talk

BBC | June 24, 2010

Kenneth O’Keefe talks about the israeli terrorist attack on the MV Mavi Marmara which killed 9 humanitarian activists.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

See also:

June 25, 2010 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Leave a comment

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR ADMITS ROGUE OPERATIONS, SPYING AND WORSE

June 22, 2010 | By Gordon Duff

ROGUE ISRAELI-SOVIET SPY, JONATHAN POLLARD

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES, MICHAEL OREN  “WE DON’T SPY ON AMERICA, ROGUE ISRAELI GROUPS DID IT”

“…we’re talking about an event that was run by a rogue organization in the Israeli intelligence community” (Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on the Jonathan Pollard spy case)

In a shocking revelation today, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren admitted that super-spy Johnathan Pollard, responsible for the murder of 100 CIA agents and the turnover of 360 square feet of vital intelligence to the Soviet Union wasn’t really working for Israel at all.  In 1998, the government of Israel admitted that Jonathan Pollard was a spy for Israel, having stolen nearly every NATO defense plan needed to assure a Soviet victory in case of war.  Israel claims that a defense agreement, not in evidence, makes any information held by the United States, found useful to Israel, no matter its security classification, property of the State of Israel.  The Israeli news agency Haaretz quotes as follows:

“Israel’s ambassador to the United States on Monday said that convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was not working for Israeli government spymasters but for a rogue intelligence agency – apparently contradicting an official state position.”

In this instance, secrets meant to defend NATO from Soviet invasion were useful to Israel who traded them in order to get Jews released from Russia and allowed to immigrate to Israel.  Israel contended that it was their inherent right to that information because they had a vital need for it.  In that information, along with locations of all vital NATO nuclear facilities, were the names of all CIA operatives working behind the Iron Curtain and details on their contacts.  After this information went to Israel, then to Russia, all involved, CIA handlers, agents and their families were murdered, the biggest intelligence disaster in American history.

As a result of the Pollard incident, a reminder of the slaughter of the crew of the USS Liberty in 1967, many members of the FBI, CIA and US military had become extremely resentful of Israel.  The payment of $1 million to Pollard by the Israeli government in 2001, just prior to 9/11 and his status as Israel’s greatest living hero, was seen as proof of official sanction for his spying, sanction backed by the 1998 admission.  Now, however, Ambassador Oren has announced this was simply cover for Israel’s embarrassment at its inability to control a massive rogue operation, not only of spies but special operations groups of every kind, working around the world but in no way, whatsoever, answerable to the Israeli government.

Thus, the suppression of Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attacks, including the arrests in New York of Israeli operatives as terrorists involved in the attack, and their subsequent release, can now be understood.  As to what part this rogue organization that has misrepresented itself as government sanctioned, typically as Mossad, was involved in the planning of 9/11 is unclear other than their foreknowledge of the attacks.

Were Israeli’s warned in order to incriminate Israel? An examination of casualty figures for the 9/11 attacks shows a number of victims with Jewish names but no holders of Israeli passports, although many were employed in the World Trade Center, the largest group of foreign passport holders by far. Citizens of 57 countries perished on 9/11.

By far the foreign country with the largest loss of life was the United Kingdom, with 67 deaths (excluding the overseas territory of Bermuda). India had 41, South Korea had 28 and Canada and Japan had 24 each. Colombia had seventeen and Jamaica, Mexico and the Philippines had sixteen each. Australia and Germany had eleven each, while Italy had ten.

There is absolutely no evidence that a rogue intelligence operation had contacted Israeli passport holders or given out any warning at all.  However, when the fact of the bizarre statistical anomaly in 9/11 casualties came to light immediately after the attack, news organizations universally misrepresented these facts, now in “public domain.”

COWBOY MANIACS, DESTROYING ISRAEL’S GOOD NAME

With the admission of a conspiracy, operating worldwide with one goal, the destabilization of the State of Israel, not by attacks on Israel but by attacks done in Israel’s name, we enter a new region in the analysis of security threats.  Most serious, of course, is the door this opens regarding culpability for 9/11, something Israel has been increasingly subject to.  Now it has become  clear that the ties between groups that were involved in the proven demolition of Building 7 and the Israeli terrorists arrested by the NYPD in no way lead to the Israeli government.  As to whether the companies owned by Israeli nationals whose catastrophic series of security failures on 9/11 contributed to the disaster are part of this terrorist ring is, in no way clearly established either.

A similar set of circumstances during the 2009 Christmas “crotch bombing” in Detroit may, however, bring into question the possibility of a pattern of conduct within this organization that Ambassador Oren has exposed.

It remains to be seen how many terrorist operations that have been tagged as Mossad can be tied to the group Oren refers to.  Attempts to get details from the Israeli embassy in Washington on the make-up of these groups, whether they are Israeli nationals, Americans of Jewish heritage, former Mossad or IDF has not yielded results.  Whether operations like the PKK attack on Turkey or the assassination of an Hamas agent in Dubai can be credit to this group remains to be seen.

June 23, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

After all I am a Proper Zionist Jew

October 27, 2009 | Gilad Atzmon

I am a Holocaust survivor

Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.

In spite of all these fear inflicting stories, that were purposely installed in my soul since I opened my eyes for the first time, I have become a functional and even a successful human being. I somehow survived the horror against all odds. I even manage to love my neighbour. In spite of all the fearful, traumatic indoctrination I miraculously  managed to master my cheering alto saxophone rather than the sobbing violin.

In fact, I have already decided that in case the Queen, or any other member of the Royal Family should ever consider to make me into a ‘Sir’ for my bebop achievements, or even for facing Zionist barbarism with my bare pen, I will immediately change my surname from Atzmon to Vive, just to become the first and only Sir Vive.

I am also totally against Holocaust denial

I clearly resent those who deny the genocides that are taking place in the name of the Holocaust. Palestine is one example, Iraq is another and the one that is set for Iran, is probably too scary to contemplate.

The Holocaust is a relatively new religion (4). It lacks mercy or compassion, instead it promises revenge through retribution. For its followers, it is somehow liberating because it allows them to punish whoever they like as long they gain some pleasure. This may explain why the Israelis ended up punishing the Palestinians for crimes that were committed by Europeans. It is rather clear that the newly emerging religion is not just about ‘eye for an eye’; it is actually an eye for thousands and thousands of eyes.

A month ago, while visiting in Auschwitz, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak left a note in the official visitors book: ‘a strong Israel is both the comfort and the revenge’(5). No one could summarize the aspiration of the religion any better. The Holocaust religion doesn’t offer redemption. It is a crude violent manifestation of sheer collective brutality. It cannot resolve anything, for aggression can only lead to more and more aggression. In the Holocaust religion there is neither room for peace or grace. Take it from Barak, revenge is where they find comfort.

To deny the danger posed by the Holocaust religion and its followers is to be complicit in a growing crime against humanity and against every possible human value.

I am also in total support of the Jewish National Project

Some believe that after 2000 years of ‘phantasmic Diaspora’ Jews are indeed entitled to an imaginary ‘national home land of their own’. The Zionists apparently meant it sincerely. The Jewish state is now realistic enough to have turned the entire Middle East into a ticking bomb.

Reviewing the Israeli record of crimes against humanity in the last six decades doesn’t leave much room for speculation. We are dealing here with a pathological sinister society. Hence, as much as some of us may agree that Jews should enjoy a hypothetical right for a land of their own, planet Earth is certainly not the ideal location for such an affair.

Hence, I would urge NASA to join in and to make a special effort to find a suitable alternative planet for the Zionist homeland in outer space or even in another galaxy. The Galactic Zionist project would signify the immediate move from ‘promised land’ to ‘promised planet’. I would enthusiastically stress that rather than searching for ‘a land with no people for a people with no land’, what we really want is a ‘lonely planet’. It can even be a ‘desert’ for they claim to know how to make the desert bloom. In a planet of their own the galactic Zionists wouldn’t need to oppress anyone, they wouldn’t ethnically cleanse either, they wouldn’t have to lock the indigenous people in concentration camps, for there won’t be any indigenous people around to abuse, starve, murder and cleanse. They wouldn’t have to pour white phosphorous over their neighbours for there won’t be any neighbours. I would highly recommend NASA to search for a planet with very low gravity just to make it light for people to wander around. After all, we want the new galactic Zionists to enjoy their futuristic project as much as the Palestinians and many others may enjoy their absence.

So here I am, a proper Jew after all: I am a survivor, I oppose Holocaust denial, I support the Jewish national aspiration. Even the chief Rabbi of Britain cannot ask for more than that.

(1) Acknowledged recently to be a ‘myth’ by the Israeli holocaust museum Yad Vashem

(2) A historical fact protected by European Law.

(3) A slightly confusing narrative. If the Nazis were interested in annihilating the entire European Jewish population as suggested by the orthodox Zionist holocaust narrative, then it is rather ambiguous as to just what led them to march what was left of European Jewry, into their crumbling Nazi fatherland at a time when it was clear that they were losing the war. The two narratives i.e. ‘annihilation’ and ‘death march’, seem to oppose each other. The issue deserves further elaboration. I would just suggest that the reasonable answers I have come across may severely damage the Zionist holocaust narrative.

(4) The Israeli Philosophy professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was probably the first to define the holocaust as the ‘new Jewish religion’.

(5) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3790707,00.html

June 23, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

9/11 Experiments: Collapse vs. Demolition

Physics and Reason  —  June 15, 2010

Any theory that does not match experiment is wrong. It doesn’t matter what the computer models predict, how much funding is behind it, what the experts say, or what everyone “thinks”.

Part 1

Part 2

June 20, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Responsibly Destroying the World’s Peasantry

Turkish Weekly | 11 June 2010

The World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretariat recently presented seven “Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment.” The principles seek to ensure that large-scale land investments result in “win-win” situations, benefiting investors and directly affected communities alike. But, though well-intended, the principles are woefully inadequate.

It has been several years since private investors and states began buying and leasing millions of hectares of farmland worldwide in order to secure their domestic supply of food, raw commodities, and biofuels, or to get subsidies for carbon storage through plantations. Western investors, including Wall Street banks and hedge funds, now view direct investments in land as a safe haven in an otherwise turbulent financial climate.

The scope of the phenomenon is enormous. Since 2006, between 15 and 20 million hectares of farmland, the equivalent of the total arable surface of France, have been the subject of negotiations by foreign investors.

The risks are considerable. All too often, notions such as “reserve agricultural land,” or “idle land,” are manipulated out of existence, sometimes being used to designate land on which many livelihoods depend, and that is subject to long-standing customary rights. The requirement that evictions take place only for a valid “public purpose,” with fair compensation, and following consultation of those affected, is honored more in the breach than in the observance.

In Africa, rural land is generally considered to be state-owned, and is treated by governments as if it were their own. In Latin America, the gap between large landowners and small peasants is widening. In South Asia, many populations are currently being driven off their ancestral land to make room for large palm-oil plantations, special economic zones, or re-forestation projects.

The set of principles that have been proposed to discipline the phenomenon remain purely voluntary. But what is required is to insist that governments comply fully with their human rights obligations, including the right to food, the right of all peoples to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources, and the right not to be deprived of the means of subsistence. Because the principles ignore human rights, they neglect the essential dimension of accountability.

There is also a clear tension between ceding land to investors for the creation of large plantations, and the objective of redistributing land and ensuring more equitable access to it. Governments have repeatedly committed themselves to these goals, most recently at the 2006 International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development.

The underlying problem runs deeper than how the principles have been formulated. The promotion of large-scale land investment is based on the belief that combating hunger requires boosting food production, and that supply has been lagging because of a lack of investment in agriculture. Hence, if investment can be attracted to agriculture, it should be welcomed, and whichever rules are imposed should encourage it, not deter it.

But both the diagnosis and the remedy are incorrect. Hunger and malnutrition are not primarily the result of insufficient food production; they are the result of poverty and inequality, particularly in rural areas, where 75% of the world’s poor still reside.

In the past, agricultural development has prioritized large-scale, capitalized forms of agriculture, neglecting smallholders who feed local communities. And governments have failed to protect agricultural workers from exploitation in an increasingly competitive environment. It should come as no wonder that smallholders and agricultural laborers represent a combined 70% of those who are unable to feed themselves today.

Accelerating the shift towards large-scale, highly mechanized forms of agriculture will not solve the problem. Indeed, it will make it worse. The largest and best-equipped farms are highly competitive, in the sense that they can produce for markets at a lower cost. But they also create a number of social costs that are not accounted for in the market price of their output.

Smallholders, by contrast, produce at a higher cost. They are often very productive by hectare, since they maximize the use of the soil, and achieve the best complementary use of plants and animals. But the form of agriculture that they practice, which relies less on external inputs and mechanization, is highly labor-intensive.

If smallholders compete in the same markets as the large farms, they lose. Yet they render invaluable services, in terms of preservation of agro- and biodiversity, local communities’ resilience to price shocks or weather-related events, and environmental conservation.

The arrival of large-scale investment in agriculture will alter the relationship between these worlds of farming. It will exacerbate highly unequal competition. And it could cause massive social disruptions in the world’s rural areas.

Certainly, agricultural investment should develop responsibly. But, while many have seen the scares provoked by spiking food prices in recent years as an opportunity for investment, opportunities should not be mistaken for solutions.

To re-launch agriculture in the developing world would require an estimated $30 billion per year, representing 0.05% of global GDP. But how much is invested in agriculture matters less than the type of agriculture that we support. By supporting further consolidation of large-scale monocultures in the hands of the most powerful economic actors, we risk widening further the gap with small-scale, family farming, while pushing a model of industrial farming that is already responsible for one-third of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions today.

It is regrettable that, instead of rising to the challenge of developing agriculture in a way that is more socially and environmentally sustainable, we act as if accelerating the destruction of the global peasantry could be accomplished responsibly.

June 12, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

FBI investigate peace activist

By Paul Woodward on June 11, 2010

At a recent protest in San Francisco, Zionists hurled insults at peace activists and also issued threats such as this:

You’re all being identified, every last one of you…we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult..we will disrupt your families…

It would appear that there are Zionists in Austin, Texas, who share the same sentiment and have decided to enlist the services of the FBI in order to pursue their political agenda.

What other plausible explanation can there be as to why the FBI came to question the mother of five shown in this video? She is a part-time registered nurse and part-time peace activist whose only form of “suspicious” behavior is that she has participated in protests calling for justice in Palestine.


Aletho News adds:

Israel is (as usual) taking revenge on the Palestinian relatives of activists onboard. Those who seek to non violently oppose Zionist policies of Apartheid violence are having loved ones interrogated by the Shabak. – Link

June 11, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Challenging the Jewish National Fund

By Pete Jones | June 9, 2010

JNF eBook (Volume II, May 2010): Preparing for Legal Action – Focus: Canada Park. Editor: Uri Davis. Forward: Salman Abu Sitta. (To view the book, click here)

The project to de-mask the sinister origins and workings of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organisation that, perversely, enjoys worldwide charitable status, has continued with the release of a second volume that, like the first, is to be published online as an e-book.

The first volume provided a broad overview of the birth of the JNF and its functional role as the colonialising arm of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). The second volume does not skimp on explanatory background but, simultaneously, takes up a more direct challenge to the JNF’s legitimacy, analysing its work through the prism of the organisation’s status in Canada. This is largely undertaken in the context of the construction of the controversial Canada Park in the occupied West Bank atop the ruins of three Palestinian villages; a park that depended on contributions from JNF Canada (JNFC) for its construction.

Around this more specific discussion, the reader is consistently reminded of the broad illegitimacy of the JNF’s operations and charitable status and how, in fact, its work makes it directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from 1948 and the construction of an insidious apartheid legal structure in Israel. A brief and grossly reductive summary might proceed as follows: the JNF was established to protect lands in Israel for eternity and was to lease these lands only to Jews. Following the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 the nascent Israeli state, fearing UN reprisals should this Palestinian land come under the aegis of a state organ, used the JNF to secure these territories while, eventually, giving the fund an integral and decisive role in the state administration of land in Israel. On the surface the JNF thus appears to control just 13% of the land in Israel, but in actuality its powerful influence in the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) means that it has a deciding say in the distribution and utilisation of over 90% of the state’s land.

The impact of the JNF’s private charter on Israeli state policy, thanks to the fund’s control over the ILA, means that, effectively, Arabs cannot lease land from this organisation because of the stipulation that the JNF lease to Jews only. Despite various challenges to this discriminatory policy (challenges that have even come from the Israeli High Court) the JNF has been allowed to continue its work and an accumulation and distribution of land that reinforces the apartheid legal system in Israel and makes a resolution of the question of Palestinian refugees increasingly complex and distant.

So it is with the JNF’s illegitimacy and culpability in mind that that the second volume of the e-book seeks to shift opposition to the JNF from the more traditional political and educational realms towards an effective legal challenge to its past and its present behaviour. The objection, in Canada, is that the JNF’s charity status means it was able to use tax-deductible Canadian dollars and Canada’s name in conjunction with the building of Canada Park on the ruins of three Palestinian villages – Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba – which were destroyed and whose 12,000 inhabitants were displaced in the course of the war crimes committed by the Zionist forces in 1948. The use of these tax-deductible dollars, collected from Canadian tax-payers, is being challenged by activists in Canada in the hope that this will lead, as editor and contributor Professor Uri Davis says, ‘to the removal of the JNF from the Canadian Registrar of Charities; to the nullification of the JNF tax exempt status in Canada; and to the classification of the JNF, together with all such bodies that are formally affiliated to the WZO and JA [the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel] as illegal organizations in Canada.’

Professor Davis explains that the first hand eye witness reports in this volume are all admissible as evidence in a court of law as part of a legal challenge to the JNF. His own contribution, a powerful human rights-based defence of the opposition to the JNF, features an extraordinary eye witness account from a reserve soldier in the IDF at the time of the destruction of the three villages, and displacement of the resident population, that would pave the way for Canada Park. A re-wording cannot do justice to the soldier’s powerful, deeply human portrayal of the suffering of the villagers at the hands of the Zionist forces. It becomes clear that the young Israeli soldiers were unprepared for such a shocking and inhuman duty, and perhaps one can see the birth of today’s slick Israeli propaganda machine in the way in which the growing state was compelled to justify its actions to its own soldiers in the wake of the devastation wrought in 1967.

The twists and turns and shockingly cynical moves (striking even to those readers well acquainted with Israel’s capacity for contemptuously Machiavellian behaviour) in the history and growth of the JNF are drawn out in each contribution in different ways. One anecdote that is worth mentioning comes in Dr Ismail Zayid’s chapter where he explains that, following his public campaigning against the JNF Canada and Canada Park, he was sent a certificate from the JNFC explaining that they had planted a tree in the park in tribute to his name. That Dr Zayid’s campaign, on a platform of opposition to war crimes and abuse of human rights, should be responded to in such a derisory and insulting manner says much for the inhumanity of those at the head of the JNF.

It is to be hoped, then, that this book can help in the on-going struggle against not only the JNF, but all organs of the Israeli state that serve to perpetuate the racist apartheid state and maintain the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of their occupiers. Professor Davis’ hope that a substantial challenge can be made through the courts is to be admired and supported. He finishes his preface with the words:

“Justices, relative to politicians, are less prone to intimidation. Their primary reference is the constitution and the law – not campaign funding and the ballot box. Since political-Zionist apartheid values patently run counter to the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that inform liberal democratic constitutions, in the courtroom, and definitely in the constitutional courtroom, the JNF is almost sure to lose.”

If he is proved right, it will be a great day not only for opponents of the JNF and supporters of Palestine, but for advocates of justice and human rights worldwide.

– Pete Jones is a former journalist. He is involved with projects to raise awareness of the human rights abuses taking place under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, and works closely within the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign here in London.

June 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Birobidzan experiencing a small revival, thanks to Jews arriving from Israel

Christian Science Monitor: Russians returning


Jewish Autonomous Region

Area
36,000 sq km

Capital
Birobidzhan

Key Industries
Construction materials, energy, machine engineering and metals, timber, pulp and paper, light, and food and beverages.

Transport infrastructure

The Jewish Autonomous Region has a well-developed transport infrastructure. The Amur River links the Region to the Pacific ocean. The Trans-Siberian railroad also crosses the Region.

Roads. The Jewish Autonomous Region has 1,640 kilometers of public highway. The Region’s main artery is the Khabarovsk – Birobidjan – Obluchie – Amur Region highway, with a ferry over the Amur river. The Region has international road links over the Amur River to the Chinese towns of Tongjiang, Mingshang and Jiayin.

Railroads. The Jewish Autonomous Region has 310 kilometers of railroad. The Trans-Siberian railroad links the Region to the rest of Russia.

Airports. The Region’s airport at Zhiolty Yar links Birobidjan with Khabarovsk and remote urban centers. The Region also plans to start international flights between Birobidjan and Jiamusi (China).

River transport. The total length of the Region’s waterways (Amur and Tunguska rivers) is 600 kilometers. Navigation is open on the Amur River for 180 days on average.

birobidzhan-jewish-autonomous-region_4

Related articles

June 9, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

San Fransisco Jews Menace Women in Black

By Cicilie Surasky | June 7, 2010

On June 6th, 2010, peace activists including members of Bay Area Women in Black and Jewish Voice for Peace held a silent vigil outside the main entrance to the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s annual “Israel in the Gardens” celebration. The peace activists called for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories and an end to the siege on Gaza. Their silent, dignified march was greeted by members of StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel and other affiliates who called them “kapos” (concentration camp prisoners who carried out Nazi orders on other prisoners) and suggested that Israel should “sink the next flotilla with you on it.”  One man made repeated explicit threats against the peace activists and their families and used a camera to take pictures. No one from StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel intervened. Rather, they kept up their vicious and abusive chants which included, according to multiple witnesses:

“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!” – this done as a group chant
“You’re all being identified, every last one of you…we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult..we will disrupt your families…”, all on above video.
“Sink the flotilla—and you on it!”
“Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.”
One man yelled (to someone who may have looked heat exhausted) “I hope you stroke out, old man!”
“Ugly bitches” said to older women.
“You’re not a Jew! you gave up your Jewishness!”
“Witches in black! Bitches in black!” (hard to tell which one it was, or whether they alternated the chant)
“You fucking…!”
“Bin Laden loves you! you support terrorism!”
“Is there a coroner in the house? Women in Black are dead!”
“Is there a doctor in the house? Women in Black are sick!”
“End the occupation of our sidewalk.”
“Remember 9/11, they were dancing in the streets.”
“Asshole!”
“Anti-Semite!”
“Bigot!”
“Sharmuta!” this was chanted for a while (means “slut” or “whore” in Arabic and which was particularly shocking for Arabic speakers to hear)
“Commit suicide!”
“Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today!”
They were also lesbian-baiting, even though they were chanting “Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today?” One guy yelled “lesbian” at me and my friend (correctly assessing our sexual identity) and maybe the same guy yelled at someone else, “When’s the last time you dated a man?”

One guy kept saying “you’re looking at real people now (meaning Stand with Israel folks); you are not people.”

Signs said: “JVP, Proud to be ashamed to be Jewish.”
and “Don’t fuck with the Jews”.

An 88-year-old woman reported being told, “You’re halfway in your grave already’.
“Jihad!” chanted repeatedly at Muslim peace activists.

They also had signs that read, “JVP cons the world”, etc.

One woman waved the end of the large stick of her Israeli flag in a very threatening manner, as if to hit one of us (it happened to me several times as i walked by her), directed especially to those of us who carried signs identifying ourselves as Jews.

At an earlier demonstration last week at the consulate, there was a huge sign on the Stand with Us side (which Stand with Us later condemned). On one side it said “Until Gaza is destroyed, the job is not complete.” On the other, it said “God is great. It’s Islam that sucks.”

Over the years, members of Bay Area Women in Black chapters (a group started in Israel to protest the occupation), many of them older women including physically tiny Jewish grandmothers, have reported equally terrible encounters with StandWithUs/SF Voices with Israel- they’ve been called 4-letter words, had cameras violently thrust in their faces. At least one person had her home chalked.

That’s why threats on people’s families that you can hear in the video are being taken seriously. A few weeks ago, liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, a resident of Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco, awoke to discover he was the target of a hate crime: his house had been surrounded with threatening posters permanently affixed with glue.

StandWithUs/SF Voices with Israel hosted a booth at Israel in the Gardens and is an approved charity at the San Francisco Federation’s Jewish Community Endowment Fund, unlike Jewish Voice for Peace and other peace groups which were banned from the Federation’s acceptable charity list.

Are StandWithUs/SF Voices with Israel values the values the Federation promotes?

Related article

June 8, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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