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Video shows UK-manufactured JCB equipment destroying Jerusalem playground

By Adri Nieuwhof – The Electronic Intifada – 02/15/2012

On Monday, heavily-guarded Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian community center and a children’s playground in occupied East Jerusalem. The center was the only public space and playground for the Palestinian residents of the Wadi Hilweh area of Silwan, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem adjacent to the Old City. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority executed the demolition with British-manufactured JCB machinery.

Video screenshot shows the Israeli police force protecting the JCB machine that demolished a Palestinian community center and a playground in Silwan on 13 February

The Israeli demolition of Palestinian property in occupied East Jerusalem that is not justified by military necessity is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Moreover, by demolishing the only playground in Wadi Hilweh, Israel denies Palestinian children their right to play.

Article 31 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child enshrines the right “to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.” By ratifying the Convention in 1991, Israel is obligated to obey the directives of the Convention.

On 24 November 2011, JCB machines were seen in action demolishing two homes, a mosque and a barn in Umm Fagarah. The village is located in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. On 20 June 2011, JCB machines were úsed to destroy the village of Bir al-Eid in the South Hebron Hills.

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February 15, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Video | , | Leave a comment

The Dresden Holocaust – ‘A Single Column Of Flame’

Rense.com

On the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Within less than 14 hours not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants, possibly as many as a half a million, had perished in what was the worst single event massacre of all time.

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Toward the end of World War II, as Allied planes rained death and destruction over Germany, the old Saxon city of Dresden lay like an island of tranquillity amid desolation. Famous as a cultural center and possessing no military value, Dresden had been spared the terror that descended from the skies over the rest of the country.

In fact, little had been done to provide the ancient city of artists and craftsmen with anti-aircraft defenses. One squadron of planes had been stationed in Dresden for awhile, but the Luftwaffe decided to move the aircraft to another area where they would be of use. A gentlemen’s agreement seemed to prevail, designating Dresden an “open city.”

February 13/14 1945: Holocaust over Dresden, known as the Florence of the North. Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city. Together with the 600.000 refugees from Breslau, Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million people. Churchill had asked for “suggestions how to blaze 600.000 refugees”. He wasn’t interested how to target military installations 60 miles outside of Dresden. More than 700.000 phosphorus bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people. One bomb for every 2 people. The temperature in the centre of the city reached 1600 o centigrade. More than 260.000 bodies and residues of bodies were counted. But those who perished in the centre of the city can’t be traced. Approximately 500.000 children, women, the elderly, wounded soldiers and the animals of the zoo were slaughtered in one night.

On Shrove Tuesday, February 13, 1945, a flood of refugees fleeing the Red Army 60 miles away had swollen the city’s population to well over a million. Each new refugee brought fearful accounts of Soviet atrocities. Little did those refugees retreating from the Red terror imagine that they were about to die in a horror worse than anything Stalin could devise.

Normally, a carnival atmosphere prevailed in Dresden on Shrove Tuesday. In 1945, however, the outlook was rather dismal. Houses everywhere overflowed with refugees, and thousands were forced to camp out in the streets shivering in the bitter cold.

However, the people felt relatively safe; and although the mood was grim, the circus played to a full house that night as thousands came to forget for a moment the horrors of war. Bands of little girls paraded about in carnival dress in an effort to bolster warning spirits. Half-sad smiles greeted the laughing girls, but spirits were lifted.

No one realized that in less than 24 hours those same innocent children would die screaming in Churchill’s firestorms. But, of course, no one could know that then. The Russians, to be sure, were savages, but at least the Americans and British were “honorable.”

So, when those first alarms signaled the start of 14 hours of hell, Dresden’s people streamed dutifully into their shelters. But they did so without much enthusiasm, believing the alarms to be false, since their city had never been threatened from the air. Many would never come out alive, for that “great democratic statesman,” Winston Churchill–in collusion with that other “great democratic statesman,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt–had decided that the city of Dresden was to be obliterated by saturation bombing.

What where Churchill’s motives? They appear to have been political, rather than military. Historians unanimously agree that Dresden had no military value. What industry it did have produced only cigarettes and china.

But the Yalta Conference was coming up, in which the Soviets and their Western allies would sit down like ghouls to carve up the shattered corpse of Europe. Churchill wanted a trump card–a devastating “thunderclap of Anglo-American annihilation”–with which to “impress” Stalin.

That card, however, was never played at Yalta, because bad weather delayed the originally scheduled raid. Yet Churchill insisted that the raid be carried out–to “disrupt and confuse” the German civilian population behind the lines.

Dresden’s citizens barely had time to reach their shelters. The first bomb fell at 10:09 p.m. The attack lasted 24 minutes, leaving the inner city a raging sea of fire. “Precision saturation bombing” had created the desired firestorm.

A firestorm is caused when hundreds of smaller fires join in one vast conflagration. Huge masses of air are sucked in to feed the inferno, causing an artificial tornado. Those persons unlucky enough to be caught in the rush of wind are hurled down entire streets into the flames. Those who seek refuge underground often suffocate as oxygen is pulled from the air to feed the blaze, or they perish in a blast of white heat–heat intense enough to melt human flesh.

One eyewitness who survived told of seeing “young women carrying babies running up and down the streets, their dresses and hair on fire, screaming until they fell down, or the collapsing buildings fell on top of them.”

There was a three-hour pause between the first and second raids. The lull had been calculated to lure civilians from their shelters into the open again. To escape the flames, tens of thousands of civilians had crowded into the Grosser Garten, a magnificent park nearly one and a half miles square.

The second raid came at 1:22 a.m. with no warning. Twice as many bombers returned with a massive load of incendiary bombs. The second wave was designed to spread the raging firestorm into the Grosser Garten.

It was a complete “success.” Within a few minutes a sheet of flame ripped across the grass, uprooting trees and littering the branches of others with everything from bicycles to human limbs. For days afterward, they remained bizarrely strewn about as grim reminders of Allied sadism.

At the start of the second air assault, many were still huddled in tunnels and cellars, waiting for the fires of the first attack to die down. At 1:30 a.m. an ominous rumble reached the ears of the commander of a Labor Service convoy sent into the city on a rescue mission. He described it this way:

“The detonation shook the cellar walls. The sound of the explosions mingled with a new, stranger sound which seemed to come closer and closer, the sound of a thundering waterfall; it was the sound of the mighty tornado howling in the inner city.”

MELTING HUMAN FLESH

Others hiding below ground died. But they died painlessly–they simply glowed bright orange and blue in the darkness. As the heat intensified, they either disintegrated into cinders or melted into a thick liquid–often three or four feet deep in spots.

Shortly after 10:30 on the morning of February 14, the last raid swept over the city. American bombers pounded the rubble that had been Dresden for a steady 38 minutes. But this attack was not nearly as heavy as the first two.

However, what distinguished this raid was the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which it was carried out. U.S. Mustangs appeared low over the city, strafing anything that moved, including a column of rescue vehicles rushing to the city to evacuate survivors. One assault was aimed at the banks of the Elbe River, where refugees had huddled during the horrible night.

In the last year of the war, Dresden had become a hospital town. During the previous night’s massacre, heroic nurses had dragged thousands of crippled patients to the Elbe. The low-flying Mustangs machine-gunned those helpless patients, as well as thousands of old men, women and children who had escaped the city.

When the last plane left the sky, Dresden was a scorched ruin, its blackened streets filled with corpses. The city was spared no horror. A flock of vultures escaped from the zoo and fattened on the carnage. Rats swarmed over the piles of corpses.

A Swiss citizen described his visit to Dresden two weeks after the raid: “I could see torn-off arms and legs, mutilated torsos and heads which had been wrenched from their bodies and rolled away. In places the corpses were still lying so densely that I had to clear a path through them in order not to tread on arms and legs.”

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February 12, 2012 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Kosher Terrorists to be Delisted

By Gilad Atzmon | February 11, 2012

NBC reported two days ago that Israel teams up with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists.

The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.

Both Iranian, Israeli and Western commentators tend to believe that Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, known as the MEK are behind the terror campaign.

In 1997, the State Department listed the MEK as a terrorist group, justifying it with an unclassified 40-page summary of the organization’s  activities going back more than 25 years.

But in the last few weeks the Jewish Lobby in the USA is going out of its way to support the terrorist MEK.

Watch Zionist Alan Dershowitz advocating the immediate delisting of an active terror organisation.

In the video above Zionist Dershowitz  urges the U.S. government to protect the 3,400 MEK members and their families at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, about 35 miles north of Baghdad.  With the departure of U.S. troops, the MEK feared that Iraqi forces, with encouragement from Iran, would attack the camp, leading to a bloodbath.  One may be naïve enough to believe that Dershowitz’call is nothing but noble, yet, embarrassingly enough,  the same Dershowitz, has never been caught trying to stop his beloved Jewish State from murdering Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank or anywhere else.

This discrepancy is far from being a coincidence. Apparently killing civilians in the name of the Jewish State must be a ‘kosher endeavour’.

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February 12, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Host and the Parasite – How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America

Review of Greg Felton’s “The Host and the Parasite – How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America” (Video Below)

By D. Saykaly

“The Host and the Parasite” is an extraordinarily important book that traces America’s slide into fascism and subservience to a foreign power.

Felton argues persuasively that 3 groups have converged and come to dominate American policy for the benefit of Israel. Those 3 groups are: the neo-conservatives; the Republican evangelicals (Christian Zionists); and Jewish Zionists. He backs up his analysis with over 800 footnoted references to government, scholarly and media sources.

Felton refutes the traditional progressive view that Israel is merely a client state of America. If this is so, he asks, how has America come to pursue policies that are so utterly contrary to America’s own national interest while being so highly beneficial to its junior partner?

Felton also refutes the theory that ‘it’s all about oil’, arguing that the first Gulf War was the last American oil war and that the 2nd Gulf War ignored the interests of American oil companies, increased American oil costs and reduced American national security. How could this have happened? The 2nd war, he demonstrates, can only be adequately explained by the take-over of American foreign and domestic policy for the benefit of Israel.

Felton’s book integrates a remarkable range of relevant material, including:

– the decline of American republican government from Vietnam to the present;
– the rise of American fascism since the Reagan years;
– the rise of the pro-Israel lobby in America and its growing influence on the presidency from 1948 until now;
– the subjugation of America’s Congress and Senate by the pro-Israel lobby;
– the anti-democratic philosophy of Leo Strauss and its corrosive influence on America via the neo-conservative movement;
– the growth and goals of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and other right wing think tanks;
– PNAC’s search for a new ‘Pearl Harbour’ to permit the restructuring of America;
– The Israeli foreign policy goal of dismembering Iraq to ensure Israeli regional domination;
– the demonization of Islam;
– the origins and rise of the religious right in America and its obsession with Israel;
– the planned attack on Iran that is being pushed by Israel and its proxies in America;
– the extremely gloomy prospects for America to “return to normal”.

Felton is generous in his praise of others who have explored some of this material such as John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Jimmy Carter and Paul Findley. Felton’s book, however, is a far more comprehensive study of the subject and integrates a much fuller range of issues and data to demonstrate the self-destructive nature of American policy in our time.

For those who imagine that America’s Mid East policy is motivated by “love of justice and democracy”, Felton reviews America’s shameful and ongoing record of supporting dictators and overthrowing democratically elected 3rd world governments.

For those who pretend that America’s Mid East policy is intended to serve America’s self-interest, Felton reviews the appalling cost to America of its pro-Israel policy: thousands of dead American soldiers; trillions of dollars of debt incurred over the years due to higher oil costs and ruinous wars; the enmity of the world; and the destruction of the American system of republican government.

And what has America gained by supporting Israel? Nothing, Felton argues, that can begin to justify the appalling cost.

The book’s cover (see above) makes it clear that ‘Israel’s 5th column’ includes secular neo-con crooks like Rumsfeld and Cheney; Christian evangelical maniacs like Bush; and Jewish Zionist power players like Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz. Together, these people have torn up the American Constitution, dedicated America to endless war, bankrupted the country and endangered its security while cynically promoting the interests of a foreign power.

Available in paperback

Review by Harrison Koehl

The Host and the Parasite is the most comprehensive account of the rise of American fascism, its causes, facilitating factors, and implications for the future. Felton analyzes the profound effect of simplistic and authoritarian political and economic theories, in particular “Straussian” economics, in concert with equally dangerous religious fanaticism and political Zionism.

This combination of elements has created an opening for people like Bolton, Perle, Bush, and Cheney to ascend to influential leadership positions. That is, people without conscience who give full support to a foreign pathocratic regime: Israel.

Felton examines the many myths behind the justification for the Iraq war, both official and alternative, and demonstrates that none of these reasons hold up. His conclusion is the only tenable one: Iraq was invaded for the sake of Israel.

The book also has the most compact and informative account of the events of 9/11, including the stories that most other researchers ignore. That is, the Israeli spy operations in the months leading up to 9/11 and the Israeli Mossad agents that were arrested in New York on 9/11.

In short, The Host and the Parasite is a thorough and logical analysis of American foreign policy and the truth behind the “War on Terror”.

~

Greg Felton:

The Host and The Parasite (Part 1) – Click here to continue

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February 11, 2012 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Former Irish hunger striker’s message for Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner 55 days on hunger strike

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 02/09/2012

Tommy McKearney, one of the participants of the legendary 1980-81 Irish hunger strikes has sent a video message of solidarity to Khader Adnan and his family.

Adnan, a Palestinian, has been on hunger strike ever since his 17 December detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.

In the 3-minute video, McKearney begins his comments with these words:

My name is Tommy McKearney. I’m a former member of the IRA. Thirty two years ago I was on hunger strike for 53 days in the H Blocks. Today Khader Adnan will be 54 days on hunger strike. Held by the Israeli government on administrative detention, in other words without charge or conviction, he is battling against atrocious conditions and a very unjust system. His life is ebbing away in a very cruel and harsh regime. His conditions are hard, difficult and awful. The world must intervene to save this man’s life in the name of humanity, in the name of decency, in the name of justice and legality.

Fifty-four days on hunger strike his body is beginning to collapse. We can’t say for sure whether this man will be alive tonight or tomorrow night because at this stage he has passed a critical point in which a human body can survive without food or nourishment. His pain is enormous, but his plight is deplorable…

McKearney was among a group of seven Irish Republican prisoners who went on hunger strike at the notorious British-run Maze Prison in 1980. The following year 23 more prisoners, went on hunger strike. The strikes were sparked by punitive British conditions against political prisoners.

Ten of the men fasted until death, perhaps the best known of whom was Bobby Sands who died on 5 May 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. Sands was 27 years old. The Irish hunger strikes attracted world-wide sympathy and became a symbol of the Irish struggle.

February 9, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | Leave a comment

Shabak tortures and ill-treats Palestinian detainees with impunity

By Adri Nieuwhof – The Electronic Intifada – 02/07/2012

The Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI) has released a paper on its efforts to hold the Israel Security Agency (ISA) – or Shabak – to account for its practices of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees. In Accountability Still Denied, PCATI reveals how Israel has evaded criminal investigations into all 701 complaints of torture and ill-treatment.

In October 1991, Israel ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Israel should therefore prevent acts of torture. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification of torture, according to the Convention. According to article 4, Israel must ensure that all acts of torture, attempts to commit torture and acts of complicity or participation in torture are made punishable “by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.” However, PCATI found that Israel has hitherto ignored its international obligations to halt torture.

Torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees

Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations have consistently reported about violations of the rights of Palestinian political prisoners. In its paper, PCATI presents a summary of two complaints on torture. In the case of Jihad Mughrabi the Shabak used physical force, beating the detainee’s head and chest with their fists and guns and kicking his legs. The violence produced bleeding wounds and the detainee lost consciousness while being tortured. He was taken to hospital. Shabak agents also exerted psychological pressure by showing Mughrabi detained family members. Mughrabi’s testimony is recorded on video.


Ala’a Salem also filed a complaint of torture suffered during Shabak interrogations. Ala’a was interviewed by Social Television to spread his story. The video is in Arabic with subtitles in Hebrew:

Habib Ph. Jaudy has translated what Ala’a said into English:

“They put me in jail for two days. Then they brought me back to the isolation cell and chained me.

Starting from there my treatment was beyond description. Naturally during this whole time I was forbidden to meet the lawyer.

I was placed on concrete, with my hands and feet in steel chains.

For the first period, after every eight hours of chaining they’d give me two and a half minutes of rest to eat and go to the toilet. But if you dare to ask to go to the toilet when you are chained [i.e. at a time other than your permitted two-and-a-half minute rest period], the eight hours would be extended to ten or even twelve hours of chaining as punishment.

At one time on the second day in the ‘hotel’ [this must be the interrogation place] there was a crazy Jewish person in the cell next to me shouting for 24 hours. So even if I was dying to sleep in my condition I couldn’t close my eyes. So I asked to go to the toilet, but in vain, I shouted but still in vain. (Video cut at that point.)

The reaction was that five soldiers came in and started hitting me. My nose was bleeding and blood came out of my mouth and I couldn’t do anything as I was chained. At that time I had tears running down my face … firstly because of the harsh pain and secondly because of the feeling that you can’t do anything about it.”

No proper procedure to investigate complaints

The majority of detainees who reported torture or ill-treatment to PCATI’s lawyers refused to submit complaints to the Israeli authorities. According to PCATI, the Palestinian detainees lack trust in Israel’s mechanism of investigation or fear reprisals.

Nevertheless, the Inspector of Interrogee Complaints (IIC) – who is an agent of the Shabak – received 701 complaints of torture and ill-treatment between 2001 and 2010. In 2009 and 2010 the IIC received 52 and 51 complaints respectively. PCATI informed me that the trend in the number of complaints continued in 2011.

Complaints of torture and ill-treatment have to be submitted to the Attorney General, who delegates a senior official within the State Attorney’s office to decide upon the complaints. Instead of opening a criminal investigation, the senior official refers the complaints for a preliminary inquiry to the Shabak Inspector of Interrogee Complaints. PCATI criticizes the inquiry:

Complainants’ testimonies are taken by the IIC during very brief and unannounced visits, It has been common practice for the IIC to falsely introduce himself as a representative of the Ministry of Justice, and complainants’ testimonies have been taken under conditions that replicate the interrogation itself: in the very same room where ISA interrogations take place, and, in some instances, while the complainants have remained shackled for the duration of the meeting.

No complaint of torture criminally investigated

Based on an analysis of its correspondence with the State Attorney’s Office, PCATI concludes that the majority of the complaints of torture and ill-treatment were closed because the authorities denied the facts. Fifteen percent of the complaints were closed because they were categorized under the “defense of necessity” doctrine. In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Shabak is not allowed to use physical means of interrogation that are aimed at tiring out or breaking the detainee. The Court did “not negate the possibility that the ‘necessity’ defense be available” to Shabak investigators and empowered the Attorney General to devise guidelines for such “ticking bomb” cases. PCATI writes that these guidelines – issued in 1999 – have served “as the basis for de facto approval of methods of interrogation amounting to torture and ill-treatment in such cases, thereby granting ISA interrogators blanket exemption from prosecution.”

However, the Convention against Torture does not recognize such a “defense of necessity doctrine”. The Convention is unequivocal in its absolute prohibition of torture.

In addition, the Human Rights Committee concluded in July 2010 that Israel “should ensure that all alleged cases of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and disproportionate use of force by law enforcement officials, including police, personnel of the security service and the armed forces, are thoroughly and promptly investigated by an authority independent of any of these organs, that those found guilty are punished with sentences that are commensurate with the gravity of the offense, and that compensation is provided to the victims or their families.”

PCATI writes that following the publication of its first report on the topic – Accountability Denied – in 2009, there have been no substantive changes in Israel’s practices of torture and ill treatment. The closure of all 701 complaints of torture and ill-treatment by Palestinian detainees proves that the Israeli authorities protect the perpetrators. Meanwhile, Israel’s violations of Palestinian political prisoners’ rights continues. That is why the BDS Movement must keep Israel under pressure, and human rights organizations, social movements, activists and concerned citizens must call on their politicians, governments and embassies to intervene

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February 7, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov Cheered by Syrians, Holds Talks with Assad

Al-Manar | February 7, 2012

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, shortly after he arrived in Damascus and was received by thousands of regime supporters.

“Every leader in every country should be aware of his share of responsibility. You are aware of yours,” Lavrov said to Assad as they kicked off the talks, according to English-language reports by Russian news agencies.

“We hope that the Arab people can live in peace and understanding,” the Russian envoy added.

The Syrian state news agency SANA said that the foreign minister arrived in Damascus amid a huge popular reception in appreciation of Russia’s support to Syria, it’s people and its reform program.

“Huge crowds flocked to … greet Minister Lavrov and express appreciation of Russia’s stances,” it said.

State television showed footage of a sea of people waving Syrian and Russian flags as they lined the streets of the capital, many chanting: “Thank you Russia, thank you China.”

“I want to thank Russia and China for their stand in support of the Syrian people,” one woman said, before crowds swarmed to greet Lavrov’s convoy.

Lavrov’s trip comes days after Russia vetoed along with China against a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria.

The mission is taking place on the orders of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian state media have said Lavrov is bearing a message from the Kremlin for Assad.

The foreign ministry said on Sunday the trip aimed to stabilize the escalating crisis in Syria by winning the “rapid implementation of much-needed democratic reforms” by the Assad regime.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Lavrov refused to divulge the purpose of the mission.

“When you go on a mission on the order of the head of state then the purpose of the mission is usually only revealed to the person it is addressed to. If I tell you everything now, then what is the point?” he said.

~

  | February 7, 2012
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February 7, 2012 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians in Israel – Book Review

| January 31, 2012 – AVAILABLE IN HD
By Ludwig Watzal | Palestine Chronicle | February 6, 2012

(Ben White, Palestinians in Israel. Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy, Pluto Press, London 2012, 128 pp., 13 Pounds.)

With the signing of the Oslo Accords that led to the outbreak of the so-called peace process between Israel and the occupied Palestinian people, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) abandoned its initial political goals (to realize the right of return of Palestinian refugees and to liberate Palestine from Zionist colonization) for some privileges and turned itself into an obedient servant of the colonizers. Whereas the PLO under the leadership of Yasser Arafat tried to get back some territory from Israel to establish a Palestinian state, Palestinians living in Israel, although suffering under discrimination as second-class citizens, demand Israel to become finally “a state for all its citizens” instead of staying a “Jewish State”. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the non-Jewish inhabitants have been subject to a second-class status in most walks of life.

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer specializing in the subject of Palestine/Israel. In his previous book “Israeli Apartheid” he showed that Israel established its special kind of “Israeli apartheid” that differs in its sophistication from the petty apartheid in South Africa under the white racist regime. His current book deals with the Palestinians living in Israel and their plight. It was overdue, that someone as competent as White would shed some light on Israel’s discriminatory treatment of some 20 per cent of its citizens. In comparison to their fellow countrymen in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), who live a life in extreme oppression; Israeli Palestinians might be designated as “Palestinians de luxe”.

The well-known Israeli Palestinian Knesset member Haneen Zoabi contributed a fine foreword in which she demanded full citizenship rights and added; “These taken for granted demands, for the indigenous people and for ‘full citizenship’, are suffice to undermine the moral and political legitimacy of the entire Zionist project, and to relegate it to the status of a racist, colonialist venture.” Israeli Palestinians demand from the State of Israel no less than to become the “state of all its citizens”. According to Zoabi, this demand “has forced the Jewish state to admit the primacy that it grants to Jewish-Zionist values over democratic values and to recognize the impossibility of coexistence between the two”. Currently, Israel is a democracy sui generis.

For making such demands, MK Zoabi and also the author came under attack by Zionist propagandists in Israel and Great Britain. Yaniv Halili wielded in “ynet” the worn Zionist “argument”, accusing both of “anti-Semitism”. Zionist defenders of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of human rights, contempt for international law and the United Nations, can only “justify” the morally bankrupt policies of the “only democracy in the Middle East” by slandering people who merely describe the horrible reality. The infamous Zionist lobby in Great Britain attacked the British branch of amnesty international, because it had dared present White’s book, and called for a “balanced” debate. The problem with Zionist slanderers is not their meanness – any rational person will immediately discount their arguments – the real problem lies with the non-Zionist citizens or politicians who are afraid of standing up to such intimidation, because they fear being accused of “anti-Semitism” or threatened in their career.

Ben White brings the discrimination of the forgotten minority of Israel´s colonization project in Palestine, to light. The author pursues two aims: First, he wants to show how Israel relates to its Palestinian citizens, and second, he attempts to demonstrate that “denying democracy has been part of the Zionist colonization of Palestine from the very beginning”. For White, Israel’s definition as “Jewish and democratic” is the central contradiction and the heart of the conflict.

In seven chapters White describes the manifold discrimination against what some Israelis call “Israel’s fifth column”. To preserve their status of second-class citizens, Israel developed a sophisticated set of laws that apply to Jews only. This Palestinian minority is seen by Israel’s power elite as a “demographic threat” to “Jewish majority rule”. The author shows that Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which solemnly promises to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex” is not considered by the Israeli High Court as “constitutional law”. White quotes Ari Shavit’s article “Formative words” in the daily Haaretz saying: “The state it declared was not a state of all its citizens. It was not even a Jewish-democratic state, but a Jewish state, pure and simple.” In the last phrase of this sentence lies Israel’s ongoing dilemma and its inherent contradictions. That is why many Israelis and Jews around the world call Israel an “ethnocracy” rather than a “democracy”.

The rest of the book deals with the implementation of Israel’s institutional discrimination. One of these discriminatory laws is the “Absentee Property Law” passed in 1950. This law regulates the exclusion of Palestinians from land acquisition and the “mechanism of expropriation” to realize the permanent alienation of (Palestinian absentees) land in favor of the Jewish state”. (24) According to White, there are numerous other laws to be used to confiscate land, such as the “Emergency Land Requisition of 1949”, or article 125 of the Emergency Regulations of 1948. This law enabled an area to be declared “closed” and then, using the “Land Acquisition” law of 1950 to designate the land as “uncultivated” and expropriate it for Jewish-only use, writes the author. It should come to no one’s surprise that current Israeli President Shimon Peres called this judicial sophistry a means of “directly continu(ing) the struggle for Jewish settlement and Jewish immigration”. (25) The Israeli land regime was finally completed in 1960, with the passing of Basic Law: Israel Lands 1960.

The campaign entitled “Judaising of the Galilee” overlaps and echoes and “judaisation” of occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. This strategy goes along with “day-to-day racism”, a phenomenon widely cited by White. (54) Israeli newspapers periodically, including recently, report the most outrageous racist statements by rabbis, who do not mind to cite biblical texts in justification. It should be noted, that there has been no outcry by Zionist politicians against such overt racism. The author cites opinion polls showing “deep-seated levels of anti-Arab racism” in the population. (56) Such racism is reflected, among other things in the “judaisation program” against the Bedouins in the Naqab desert and the refusal to “recognize” certain Arab villages.

Systemic discrimination is described by White in areas such as education, budgetary allocations to Palestinian communities in the Galilee and petty discrimination at all levels of society. Just being an Arab disqualifies a person from serving in the Israeli military, except for members of the Druze minority. With these disqualifications goes the loss of privileges granted to Jewish soldiers and veterans.

Summing up his findings, the author tries to remain objective by writing that there might be some “logic” to the Israeli argument in “justifying” its racist policies towards the Palestinians in the OPT by pretending that the occupied territories might be “disputed” or that there might be “security concerns”. The fallacy of these arguments is revealed when it comes to the treatment of Palestinians in Israel. Israeli politicians and their friends in the U. S. and Western Europe often point out as evidence for Israeli democracy the presence of Israeli Arabs in the Knesset. However, they ignore the fact that these Arab MKs are subjected to regular slander and threats by their right-wing Jewish “colleagues” to have their parliamentarian immunity lifted or their citizenship withdrawn. It is true that “Arabs and Jews” in Israel share the same beaches, work at the same hospitals, and may travel on the same buses. The relative absence of such petty racism hides, however, the more fundamental and pernicious discrimination against Palestinians enshrined in legislation and administrative practices.

White ends his book by quoting a revealing statement of Shmuel Dayan, General Moshe Dayan’s father, who admitted in 1950: “Maybe (not allowing the refugees back] is not right and not moral, but if we become just and moral, I do not know where we will end up.” The ongoing Zionist colonization dilemma could not be better phrased.

For democrats, who are interested in the reality and the functioning of the “Jewish and democratic” State, this book can be an eye-opener.

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February 6, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Thomas Friedman tells millions of people to ‘suck on this’

Thomas Friedman sums up the Iraq war… (5/29/2003)
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February 5, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

As anti-BDS attacks mount, students feel unsafe but U of Penn President maintains shameful silence

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada –  02/02/2012

Yesterday I wrote to University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, asking her to condemn a vile and inflammatory attack by Professor Ruben Gur on the University’s own students.

Gur likened those participating in this weekend’s conference on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) (at which I will speak) to Nazis, and Omar Barghouti to Hitler.

The unchecked inflammatory rhetoric by opponents of the conference, especially Professor Gur, is making students and conference participants feel unsafe.

Most disturbingly, Gur singled out Jewish students and speakers, calling them “capos” at Nazi extermination camps. “Capo” or “kapo” is the term for a concentration or death camp inmate who collaborated with the Nazis.

It would seem that Gutmann has no problem with such anti-Semitic attacks as long as the Jews being singled out in this despicable manner are deemed to be supporters of equal rights for Palestinians.

And Gutmann has failed to speak out even as pro-Israel groups are bringing a violence and torture advocate to campus to counter the BDS conference.

Failing to stand up to violent rhetoric

While I’ve had no response to my letter – 24 hours after sending it and confirming it was received by telephone – Gutmann wrote a public letter in the campus newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian reiterating her opposition to BDS and adding this weak sauce:

Since its founding more than 270 years ago, Penn has stood for the free exchange of ideas. That concept is central to our mission, and is one that cannot be compromised if we are to uphold our standing as a great university.

Amid the passion that many feel around this weekend’s events, we urge you to focus on the one thing we cannot afford to lose: the great tradition and enduring gift of Penn’s founders – the chance to speak our minds freely.

These banalaties are an inadequate response to one of Penn’s faculty members denouncing Jewish students as “capos” and Nazis just because he disagrees with them.

Members of PennBDS, the campus group organizing the conference, responded to Gur’s hate speech in a letter of their own:

We read with some shock the opinion piece you published yesterday by Penn Professor Ruben Gur. With no evidence whatsoever, and in direct contradiction to everything we’ve ever said or written, Gur designates our student group “genocidal” and equates our upcoming conference with Nazi anti-Semitism. He labels our Jewish participants and organizers “Capos” and (in the same breath that he scolds us for describing Alan Dershowitz as an “Israel apologist”) compares Palestinian human-rights activist Omar Barghouti with Adolf Hitler.

Gutmann too should condemn Gur’s inciteful hate speech in clear terms. Instead, on that point, she has so far chosen silence.

Perhaps people should email or call President Gutmann (215-898-7221) to make sure she gets the message that she needs to stand up for her students against vile and discriminatory rhetoric from professors, and ensure the campus is safe for them to exercise their rights.

And yet President Gutmann and the University of Pennsylvania administration seem to take a surprisingly lax view.

A question that should perhaps be investigated is whether Gutmann’s failure to protect students – especially Jewish students – against the kind of intimidation and hate speech by Professor Gur amounts to a violation of their civil rights under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Singling out Jews

Professor Gur is not the only one attacking the BDS conference and singling out Jews for special opprobrium. In The Jewish Exponent, Bryan Schwartzman writes:

More than a third of the listed speakers are Jewish, including Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

This ominous sentence – where Schwartzman ‘counts the Jews’ – echoes Gur’s singling out of Jews as “capos.”

Bringing a violence advocate to campus

Not only is the University of Pennsylvania failing to stand up for its students rights, but increasing the heated atmosphere by bringing a notorious advocate of violence and torture onto campus to speak against the BDS conference. His name is Alan Dershowitz.

Max Blumenthal, a University of Pennsylvania alumnus wrote an op-ed in The Daily Pennsylvanian, abhoring Dershowitz’s incitement to violence. Here’s an excerpt:

To counter the Penn BDS event, local pro-Israel groups including Hillel and the Philadelphia Jewish Federation have summoned the famed trial lawyer and Harvard University professor of law Alan Dershowitz to campus to keynote a Feb. 2 event: “Why Israel Matters to You, Me, and Penn: A conversation with Alan Dershowitz.” Penn’s Political Science department – which has pointedly refused to co-sponsor the BDS conference – will co-host Dershowitz’s lecture, where the professor has vowed to explain why he considers BDS to be one of the most “immoral, illegal and despicable concepts around academia today.”

The support Dershowitz received from the university and from pro-Israel groups that claim to abhor violence is ironic in light of Dershowitz’s record. Indeed, Dershowitz is an open advocate of torture who has urged Israel to destroy entire Palestinian villages, attack civilians and bulldoze their homes.

It’s really past time for the University of Pennyslvania to show some responsibility, stop pandering to the political agendas of outside groups, and stand up for the safety and rights of its own students.

~

David Horowitz Spreading his hate on campus:

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February 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fukushima Radiation NOT SAFE!

| December 11, 2011

Studies cited in order presented:

National Academy of Sciences Low-Dose Radiation Report
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11340&page=R1
Data tables used, 12D-1 and 12D-2:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11340&page=311
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/030909156X/gifmid/311.gif
How to scale that data to unique exposure scenarios, Annex 12D, Example 1:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11340&page=310

15-country study of nuclear-worker cancer risk
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17388693
Table 5 shown is from Part II of the study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17388694
http://iangoddard.com/15countries_Part2_Table5.png

Jacob et al. (2009) meta-analysis of nuclear-worker studies
http://oem.bmj.com/content/66/12/789.full.pdf
Editorial on Jacob et al. quoted
http://oem.bmj.com/content/66/12/785.extract

Chromosomal translocations are associated with cancer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3152359/

Boffetta et al. (2007) more chromoHarm entails more cancer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17071846

Bhatti et al. (2010) meta-analysis of chromosomal damage
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075914/

February 1, 2012 Posted by | Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

We Are Nabi Saleh, a new film capturing people’s struggle, Mustafa Tamimi

By on January 26, 2012

The trailer of the documentary We are Nabi Saleh!
Check out http://www.wearenabisaleh.com/ for more info.
Stay tuned: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jan-Beddegenoodts/211554788917904
We are Nabi Saleh is still looking for Co-funding, screening places and help with translation: Arabic-English. If you wan’t to collaborate, write an email to jan.beddegenoodts@hotmail.com. We can make it real together. Bless.

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January 30, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

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