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The right to own property — for Jews alone

A central problem of the implementation of the Levy Report by the government is the effective abolishment of Palestinians’ property rights

Jewish settlers run towards the West Bank village of Asira al-Qibilya near Nablus during clashes with Palestinian villagers July 3, 2011. According to witnesses, the clashes erupted after the settlers cut down olive trees belonging to the village. An Israeli army spokesperson said one Israeli was injured by a rock before security forces dispersed the crowd. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)

Jewish settlers run towards the West Bank village of Asira al-Qibilya near Nablus during clashes with Palestinian villagers July 3, 2011. According to witnesses, the clashes erupted after the settlers cut down olive trees belonging to the village. An Israeli army spokesperson said one Israeli was injured by a rock before security forces dispersed the crowd. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini – WEST BANK

By Yossi Gurvitz | Yesh Din | February 28, 2016

Our previous post on Yesh Din’s new position paper, “From Occupation to Annexation,” explored the various ways the Israeli government implements the Levy Report. This post will focus on another critical point: the erasure of the Palestinians’ right to property.

Prior to the Levy Report, the Israeli government was careful to avoid legalizing the seizure of private Palestinian property, except when it could argue it was done due to pressing military needs (“military seizure”) or by declaring it state land and claiming that it was never, in fact, private property at all. This took place, in part, because the laws of occupation demand that the occupier protect the private property of protected persons in occupied territory. The legal appeals against the illegal outposts, about 80% of which are at least partially built on private Palestinian land, challenged this way of thinking.

And then came the Levy Report, which claimed the government has the right to build settlements and outposts in the West Bank. On paper this claim may have been harmless, had its implementation not directly threatened the property of private persons.

Let’s look at some examples. The future of the Adei Ad outpost – which was at the heart of another one of our reports, “The Road to Dispossession” – is being debated by the High Court of Justice. The report detailed how Israeli civilians took over private Palestinian land while using violence against Palestinian residents who tried to hold on to their land, all while the Israeli authorities stood aside. Although the report was published in 2013, the reality it describes continues even today.

As our position paper shows, the Israeli government relies on Levy’s exceedingly broad legal interpretation to legalize a series of illegal outposts, under the pretense they are in fact neighborhoods of already existing settlements – even when they are outside the jurisdiction of their “mother settlement.” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked even boasted that “anyone who knows the Adei Ad [appeal], knows that the state responds differently these days.”

Therefore the state informed the High Court that although the outpost was illegal, it does not intend to remove it. On the contrary, it announced that it would try and legalize it. In practice, then, what Shaked meant to say was that “we decided to give criminals a prize.”

If the state told the court in 2008 that it – some day — intends to enforce the law and evacuate the outposts, its position had radically changed by 2011. Now, said the state, it will enforce the law only vis-a-vis structures built on private land, while legalizing structures built on state land. The Levy Report came out in 2012; by 2013, the state was telling the courts that in some cases “state reasons” may supersede the need to enforce the law. By 2015, the state spoke expressly about retroactive legalization.

Another case that represents the erasure of Palestinian property rights is that of Amona. Amona is the largest illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank – a significant part of the land on which it stands belongs to Palestinian residents, whose theft was followed by violence against the Palestinians. In court, the state opposed the evacuation of Amona time after time. At the end of 2014, the High Court of Justice ruled that Amona was to be evacuated by the end of 2016. So what did the government do? Did it accept the ruling and follow the instructions of the court? Of course not. It tried to bypass the court through a new bill titled the “re-ordering bill.”

This law follows one of the comments made in the Levy Report, according to which compensation for Palestinians whose land has been taken from them is preferable to evacuating the invaders. Once it can be proven that an outpost was illegally built on Palestinian land, the Palestinian owners would be forced to accept compensation and give up their rights to their own property.

According to the Levy Report, therefore, all people are equal before the law, but some are more equal. You own land? Jewish invaders took it with government aid? We won’t evacuate them, we simply legalize the invasion. Here are your 30 pieces of silver. Oh, you don’t want to take them because you’re afraid of living next to Israelis who have already proven their affinity for violence? You won’t take the silver because you don’t want to take part in Jewish expansion over parts of Palestine?  Tough. Your property rights are secondary to our historical rights. Do yourself and us a favor and take the money, because, you see, this outpost won’t be removed. It will remain here whether you like it or not. The court ruled otherwise? We’ll try and change the law. What about your rights? What rights?

The bill currently names three outposts and a part of a settlement – three outposts that the court had already ordered be removed, and one whose case is still debated. Amona is mentioned specifically as an outpost covered by the bill. Politicians are not even trying to conceal the fact the point of the bill is to prevent the High Court from slowing down the violation of Palestinian rights. Just in case, the bill – which has been frozen for the time being – allows other outposts to be added to it even after it passes.

The state’s responses to the court and the “re-ordering bill” deal outposts whose fate were either ruled on by the High Court or are still being debated. But the government ministers, being people of vision, take care not only of the past and present but also of the future. The “re-ordering committee,” created by Prime Minister Netanyahu, is supposed to provide other solutions, as it has a mandate to “examine the current process of evidence needed for proof of land ownership.” To put it more bluntly: its purpose is to make it even more difficult for them to prove they are landowners. The purpose of the committee is to create “an outline for the legalizing of structures and neighborhoods in Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria that were built with the support of the authorities.”

The Israeli government never authorized the Levy Report’s recommendations while effectively endorsing and carrying them out in secret. The government implements an unofficial policy of annexation – one that does not grant equal rights to those being annexed, while at the same time depriving them of the legal defenses they are entitled to as protected persons, since, allegedly, there is no occupation.

As for the people who live there? It’s their own problem. They should have lived someplace else. Didn’t they get the hint already?

February 29, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dragging Our Feet Toward Disaster

By Ira Helfand | CounterPunch | February 29, 2016

A United Nations meeting in Geneva this week could have enormous implications for United States national security, but it is being ignored by most of the media and by America’s political leaders. It deserves serious attention.

A new policy-making body called the Open Ended Working Group will consider ways to break the current impasse in efforts to reduce the danger of nuclear war. The group expects to make formal recommendations to the UN this fall. The initiative is especially important given recent studies on the catastrophic effects that would follow even a limited use of nuclear weapons.

The group was established by an overwhelming majority at the UN. The U.S. and all of the other nuclear weapons states voted against and are boycotting the meeting. Why?

Robert Wood, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, recently defended the American decision in a tweet: “agenda ignores security dimension of nuclear weapons. Only practical and realistic efforts will lead to a world w/o nukes.” His claim would have more weight if the United States were pursuing “practical and realistic efforts” instead of planning to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades to maintain its nuclear arsenal indefinitely.

The real reason for the boycott is that this meeting will explore ways to make the nine nuclear weapons states, which include Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, live up to their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, which requires them to negotiate the abolition of their nuclear arsenals. It very well may recommend negotiation of a new treaty that will effectively ban nuclear weapons, defining their possession as a violation of international law.

Based on the medical evidence, the nonnuclear weapons states are right to call for the elimination of these weapons.

Over the last three years, a series of major global conferences have explored the medical consequences of nuclear war. The new scientific data presented at these meeting have demonstrated the unacceptable, existential threat to humanity posed by nuclear arsenals.

Representatives of the International Red Cross have testified that the world’s leading disaster relief organization can do nothing significant to mitigate the consequences of even a single nuclear explosion, let alone a nuclear war.

Climate scientists and medical experts have presented new data showing that even a very limited nuclear war would cause catastrophic effects worldwide. The fires caused by as few as 100 small nuclear weapons, less than one-half of one percent of the world’s nuclear arsenals, directed against urban targets, would cause global climate disruption. The resulting decline in food production would trigger a “nuclear famine” across the planet and put up to two billion people at risk. A famine on this scale would be unprecedented in human history. While it would not mean the extinction of our species, it would almost certainly mean the end of modern civilization.

A limited war between India and Pakistan, using less than half of their current arsenals, could cause that kind of famine, as could the use of the nuclear warheads on a single US Trident submarine. The US has 14 of them and an arsenal of nuclear bombers and land-based missiles as well.

A full-scale war between the US and Russia using all of these weapons would cause a “nuclear winter,” with ice-age conditions across the planet persisting for a decade or more. The collapse of food production under these circumstances would lead to the death of the vast majority of the human race. It might cause our extinction as a species.

The US and Russia are now engaged in a new game of nuclear chicken in Europe and the Middle East, with the ever-present danger that one side or the other will miscalculate, or that an accident will trigger a nuclear exchange. There have been at least five occasions since 1979 when either Moscow or Washington prepared to launch a nuclear war, in the mistaken belief that they were already under attack.

The determination to hold on to these weapons stems from a deeply held belief that they somehow make a nation more secure. For most of human history, having more powerful weapons did protect us. But as Albert Einstein observed at the beginning of the nuclear era, the splitting of the atom changed everything, except the way we think and thus we head for unprecedented disaster.

If the use of even a tiny fraction of our nuclear arsenal will cause a global holocaust that engulfs us as well as the rest of humanity, how can these weapons be seen as agents of our security? They are suicide bombs. By possessing them, we are a nation of suicide bombers.

Nuclear weapons, the evidence, is now clear, are the greatest threat to our national security. We need to make their elimination our highest national security priority. The U.S. should start by joining the working group in Geneva and, as the next step toward that goal, working for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

Ira Helfand MD practices internal medicine at an urgent care center in Springfield, MA. He is a Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility and is currently the Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the 1985 Nobel Peace Laureate.

February 29, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Moscow Notes Multiple Attempts to Distort Syrian Truce With Fake Reports

Sputnik – 29.02.2016

Moscow has noted a large volume of information fleecing and attempts to disrupt the truce in Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday.

“I’d like to say that there are very many dupes and attempts to distort facts and deliberately disrupting the agreements. Our Western colleagues must very carefully approach the task of controlling those groups that for the most part listen to them and Syria’s neighbors. We are strictly fulfilling all the agreements,” Ryabkov said.

February 29, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Senior Israeli Delegation Visits Riyadh

Al-Manar – February 29, 2016

Israeli channel 10 reported that a senior Israeli delegation visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the last few weeks.

The Israeli channel meanwhile, said that the delegation was headed by a prominent Israeli official.

The visit was not the first one to the Kingdom, but the Israeli Military Censor prohibits the reports talking about such visits, according to Channel 10.

King Salman Bin Abdulaziz and the Saudi princes are not ashamed by the Israeli ties. However, they prefer they remain confidential, the report added.

Meanwhile, the Israeli channel 10 quoted Saudi officials as saying during the meetings that they are not interested in solving the Palestinian cause. However they want the Zionist entity to stand by Saudi against Iran.

February 29, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza, Pre-1948 and Gaza Now!

February 28, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

A brief history of falling off buildings

Xymphora | January 20, 2007

Throwing people off high buildings is one of the ways, along with drowning and shooting, that the American authorities get rid of inconvenient people (the Europeans seem to like poisoning).  From an article by Roger Bowen, the biographer of Canadian diplomat E. Herbert Norman:

“A Canadian diplomat and scholar who was serving in Japan at the onset of the Second World War, and was interned there following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Norman was accused of being a Communist in 1951 by allies of Joseph McCarthy in the U.S. Senate. Interrogated twice in secret by the RCMP at the urging of U.S. intelligence agencies, he was exonerated by Canadian authorities and allowed to resume his duties in the foreign service.

In the fall of 1956, following the Suez crisis, Mr. Norman, then 47, was Canada’s ambassador to Egypt. Mr. Norman worked tirelessly to find a peaceful solution in negotiations with Gamal Abdel Nasser. His eventual success in persuading Egypt’s president to admit United Nations peacekeepers into his country was, for that era, a singular achievement. Mr. Norman’s boss, Lester Pearson, later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part because of Mr. Norman’s efforts.

In March of 1957, suspicions about Mr. Norman were revived by the U.S. Senate. On April 4, Mr. Norman stepped off the roof of a nine-storey apartment building in the heart of Cairo.”

and:

“. . . it is clear that someone or some agency fabricated the details of Mr. Norman’s death and ‘leaked’ them to the U.S. press in 1957, making it appear that Mr. Norman was guilt-ridden and psychologically unstable, and that he chose to kill himself rather than face additional inquiries over his alleged Communist background.

One of several suicide notes leaked to the press then seemed to imply that Mr. Norman had had a close, perhaps homosexual, relationship with the Swedish ambassador to Egypt, Brynolf Eng. The New York Daily News account in April of 1957 reported Mr. Norman as having written to Mr. Eng on the eve of his death: ‘I wanted to spend some time with you during these last few days of my life and tell you about what has been worrying me but am afraid that even in this letter I cannot bring myself to tell you [the] true reasons that impel me to commit suicide. I have decided to die near your home. I know this may cause you some trouble and I am sorry but you are my best friend. Farewell. Sincerely, Norman.’

This account stood as the ‘truth’ for 30 years, contradicted only by Canadian sources whose comments did not register in the U.S. in 1957. The actual note Mr. Norman wrote to Mr. Eng, in his handwriting and found in the RCMP files, reads: ‘Mr. Eng, I beg forgiveness for using your flat. But it is the only clear jump where I can avoid hitting a passerby. E. H. N.’”

Norman is a fairly important guy, as his negotiations invented the concept of UN peacekeepers. Bowen has made repeated requests to the CIA to release its remaining cache of classified documents on Norman, without success. What are they hiding? It is clear that the Americans fabricated the released ‘suicide note’ to the press in order to create a motive for Norman’s suicide. If they had nothing to do with the death, why did they go to all this trouble?  I note that the Canadian Right, represented by David Frum’s father-in-law, the ancient Peter Worthington, maintains the cold war interpretation of the death of Norman.

Throwing people off tall buildings is a perfect method of assassination as it doesn’t leave any forensic evidence of a crime if it is done properly (both drowning and shooting can leave inconvenient forensic evidence).  The only tricky part is forging the suicide note, or forcing the victim to write it.  Some other prominent examples:

  1. The recent death of progressive lawyer Paul Sanford.  It has been surmised that this was Karl Rove’s revenge for an embarrassing question that Sanford asked then press secretary Scott McClellan about Rove, but my guess would be that it related to what Sanford was working on just before his death. From the Monterey Herald account, we learn that he was pacing the hallway of an upper floor, his car was parked next to the hotel, but he was not checked in as a guest. It appears he was invited to the upper floor, presumably by people who had rented a room. They could very well have tried to convince him not to publish what he was working on, ‘for the good of the country’. His pacing outside the room might reflect his trying to make up his mind. When he told them his conscience wouldn’t allow him to suppress the truth, they threw him out the window.
  2. The deaths of State Department official John J. Kokal, and long-time American government policy advisor Gus W. Weiss, both opposed to the Iraq attack.
  3. The amazing story of CIA victim Dr. Frank Olson (excellent coverage here, despite the crappy author, including discussion of CIA use of defenestration as a method of assassination, and the use of LSD as a truth serum regarding Olson’s knowledge of American biological weapons programs). After years of denial, the American government finally admitted that the CIA had given Olson LSD without his knowledge, and that this led to the suicide of Olson. It then turned out that Olson had committed ‘suicide’ by going through a closed window. Since no one would commit suicide by jumping at a closed window, it was apparent that the U. S. government admissions were part of a ‘limited hangout’ to hide the fact that the CIA had thrown Olson through the closed window. I assume CIA training handbooks now include instructions to open the window before throwing the victim out!
  4. James Forrestal, first United States Secretary of Defense, was almost certainly suicided, probably as a direct result of his principled opposition to American assistance in the stealing of land required to establish the State of Israel.

February 27, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

The NY Times, Netanyahu’s Stenographer

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | February 27, 2016

The New York Times serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s stenographer in a story this week that reports his latest rant against critics of Israeli policy, repeating his claims at length but making no attempt to verify or even question the distortions in his response.

The Israeli prime minister was reacting to comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who criticized Israel’s settlement construction in and around East Jerusalem during a session in parliament Wednesday, saying that he found the situation “genuinely shocking.” The Times, which made no mention of Cameron’s remarks at the time, now presents us with an article by Isabel Kershner framed around the official Israeli response.

Her story, “Benjamin Netanyahu Rebukes David Cameron for Criticizing Israel,” gives much space to the prime minister’s assertions and allows him the final word. It also quotes Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and allows the comments of both men to stand without challenge.

Netanyahu, speaking at a political meeting Thursday, portrayed Israel as the peacekeeper in East Jerusalem, saying that “only Israeli sovereignty” has prevented ISIS “and Hamas from igniting the holy sites as they are doing all over the Middle East.”

He implied that Israel has brought prosperity to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, citing “roads, clinics, employment and all the other trappings of normal life that their brethren do not enjoy elsewhere in the Middle East.” Mayor Barkat also stated that Israel is building “the newest, most advanced schools” for Palestinian youth and paving new roads for residents.

The Times made no attempt to challenge the veracity of these comments although they grossly misrepresent the situation Palestinians face in occupied East Jerusalem. The data is available for all to see and is certainly familiar to Kershner and Times editors.

For instance, as of January 2011:

  • Entire Palestinian neighborhoods were not connected to a sewer system and lacked paved roads and sidewalks.
  • West Jerusalem had 1,000 public parks compared to 45 in East Jerusalem.
  • West Jerusalem had 34 swimming pools; East Jerusalem had three.
  • Nearly 90 percent of the sewage pipes, roads and sidewalks in the city were found in West Jerusalem.
  • West Jerusalem had 26 libraries; East Jerusalem had two.

More recent news also belies the claims of Netanyahu and Barkat. Far from working to provide education, health care and road access for Palestinian residents, Israeli policies and actions have made life more and more difficult for the non-Jewish residents of the city:

  • In 2015, Israel placed dozens of Palestinian children under house arrest in East Jerusalem, preventing them from attending school.
  • The Israeli government has been working with settler groups to dispossess Palestinians of their homes.
  • More than a third of East Jerusalem students are unable to complete high school because there are not enough classrooms. (Under an order by the Israeli High Court, some new classrooms are being built, but these will only alleviate the shortage by half.)
  • Some 38 percent of East Jerusalem’s planned areas have been confiscated for the development of Jewish settler neighborhoods, while only 2.6 percent is zoned for public buildings—such as schools—for the city’s indigenous Palestinians.
  • Israeli invasions of Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem hospital and restrictions on patients attempting to enter the hospital prompted several United Nations agencies to condemn the actions as violations of international law.
  • By Feb. 22,  Israeli forces had demolished 27 Palestinian-owned structures in East Jerusalem, including a school, since the beginning of this year.

Kershner’s story, however, makes no mention of any of this. The focus here is solely on the Israeli show of outrage. Netanyahu and Barkat’s statements are allowed to stand, even the claim that Hamas and ISIS are working together to foment terrorism. In fact, the two are bitter enemies, but the Times has no interest in disabusing its readers of this inconvenient fact.

Cameron’s statements gave the Times an opening, a chance to examine the settlement enterprise, conditions in East Jerusalem and the attitudes of Palestinian leaders and citizens living under Israeli control. But this was not to be. Only the Israeli narrative was of interest to the Times, and even the prime minister of the United Kingdom could not make his voice heard above its strident demands.

February 27, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh Has Conviction Thrown Out

rasmea1.jpg_1718483346

Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh | Photo: Justice 4 Rasmea
teleSUR – February 26, 2016

A U.S. appellate court on Thursday vacated the conviction of Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh for allegedly lying on U.S. immigration papers 20 years earlier.

Odeh, 67, was put on trial in November 2014 for allegedly falsifying immigration documents when she first entered the U.S.. Odeh had denied ever having been “charged, convicted or imprisoned for a crime,” but the government maintained that she lied as she had been convicted in an Israeli military court for allegedly bombing a supermarket.

Odeh said she was subjected to torture and rape by Israeli interrogators and forced to sign a false confession.

The U.S. federal appeals court panel ruled that Odeh’s sentencing judge had improperly excluded testimony about the psychological trauma Odeh suffered while in Israeli military custody.

“The court’s decision presents a great victory to anti-torture advocates and survivors of torture,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights in a press release.

Odeh’s case will now return to the district judge for a possible retrial.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Omar Nayef Zayed assassinated in Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria

omarandrania

UPDATE/11:44 am/26 February: Bulgarian media and police sources are reporting that Omar was killed by falling from a high story of the building. They have noted that him being pushed is “not excluded.”  “Israeli media have been the first to report explicitly that Omar was ‘assassinated.’ This comes as no surprise. They’re simply the most knowledgeable and honest about the workings of their government and its intelligence agencies,” said Joe Catron of Samidoun.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | February 26, 2016

Omar Nayef Zayed, a former Palestinian political prisoner and escaped hunger striker whose extradition from Bulgaria Israel demanded in December, was found dead this morning inside the Palestinian embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he had sought refuge.

“Omar Nayef Zayed was targeted as a Palestinian, as a struggler, as a former political prisoner,” Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said. “His case, his targeting and his assassination were an attempt to demonstrate that no Palestinian anywhere is safe from the long arms of the Israeli occupation. This is clearly a threat to all Palestinians – especially former prisoners and veterans of the struggle in Europe. We are committed to stand with the family of Omar Nayef Zayed to pursue accountability for those responsible for taking his life and to build the movement for which his life was taken – for a free Palestine.”

The precise physical cause of Omar’s death is not yet clear, but it is clear that the cause of his death is the Israeli state’s vengeance against a Palestinian struggler committed to live free for himself and for all of his fellow Palestinians. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands an independent autopsy of Omar’s body and a full investigation by Bulgarian and Palestinian officials into the death of Omar. We demand that all those responsible for the targeting of Omar Nayef Zayed and the taking of his life be held fully accountable.

“We hold Israel and its intelligence services, the Palestinian Authority and the Bulgarian government responsible for the killing of Omar Nayef Zayed, whose life was taken as he lived his life, in the struggle for freedom for Palestine,” Mohammed Khatib, a Brussels, Belgium-based member of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said.  “He was assassinated; he was not protected; and he was constantly threatened and pursued.  The Israeli intelligence services have a long history of pursuing and assassinating Palestinians around the world – especially in Europe – targeting young leaders and veteran resisters for assassination and elimination. This outrageous crime happened inside the Palestinian embassy, inside Bulgaria. The killers and those who made this killing possible must be held accountable.”

Zayed, 52, was born in Jenin, in Palestine’s West Bank. He was arrested by occupation forces in May 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment. After a 40 day hunger strike in 1990, he was transferred to a hospital in Bethlehem where he escaped in May, disappeared and left Palestine.

In 1994, he traveled to Bulgaria. Omar married a Bulgarian citizen and has Bulgarian children; he runs a Palestinian grocery and is well-known in the Palestinian community of Sofia.

On Tuesday, 15 December, the Israeli embassy sent a letter to the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice demanding the extradition of Omar Nayef Zayed, labeling him a “fugitive from justice.”

Omar’s home was raided on Thursday, 17 December. He was not home and his son was arrested for one day. The Bulgarian prosecutor was quoted in Arabic media calling for his imprisonment and quick extradition to Tel Aviv.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes and mourns Omar Nayef Zayed, a former Palestinian political prisoner who struggled all his life for the freedom of Palestine and the Palestinian people. We extend our deepest condolences to the family of Omar Nayef Zayed, in Palestine, in Bulgaria and everywhere, and to the entire movement for the liberation of Palestine,  which has had a loving father and husband and a committed struggler for a free Palestine taken away at the hands of those who would see Palestine, and its people, forever imprisoned.  We are committed to working in all ways to hold those responsible for his death fully accountable for this vicious crime against the Palestinian people, and to struggle for the freedom – of Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine itself – which Omar Nayef Zayed held so dear.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Zionist Propaganda and Deception

By Richard Hugus | Aletho News | February 25, 2016

There is an interesting kind of inversion in Zionist propaganda whereby that which the Zionist accuses his enemy of doing, he is doing himself. Sometimes it is called projection, but in this case it is not a psychological flaw; it is done consciously for the purpose of deceit. So another word seems appropriate. Here is a case in point.

On February 22, 2016 a group called Americans for Peace and Tolerance held a news conference at the State House in Providence, in which they urged Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo to take back an offer she made last November welcoming Syrian refugees coming to the state.

This group, which claims to promote peace and tolerance, is an active supporter of Israel, which has for its entire history brought war to the world by demonizing Arabs and Muslims. When one of the most recent wars – in Syria — creates refugees, the group makes a stand for tolerance by holding a press conference to declare that Syrian refugees should not be tolerated. According to spokesman Charles Jacobs, the refugees “may pose significant dangers to Rhode Islanders, especially to the Jewish community here.” So, the people who created the wars, which in turn created the refugees, now want to be protected from having to be exposed to the refugees they created.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance are not Americans; they’re Israelis. They’re not for peace, but war. They’re not tolerant; they’re intolerant. They accuse others of hatred and violence when in fact this is their own stock in trade.

Reporting on the press conference by the Providence Journal and the Brown Daily Herald failed to point out that Americans for Peace and Tolerance is a Zionist front working for Israel. Its founder and only prominent member is Charles Jacobs, who has founded and provided the membership for other similar groups for the same purpose. These include CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (promoting Zionist media analysis), the David Project (promoting Zionist campus activism), and the American Anti-Slavery Group (promoting the Zionist attack on Sudan).

If there is a threat posed by refugees coming to the US from the Middle East, it is not that the refugees hate Jews here and wish to do them harm; it is that they understand from long experience what Zionism has done to their people, culture, and lands in the name of the Jewish state, and that they can bring this understanding to people in the US who know nothing about it. This could be all the more harmful because critical financial, military, and diplomatic aid comes from the US. Of particular worry would be refugees and leaders from Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or Sudan able to reach, talk to, and educate regular people in the US who have no idea of the racist genocide the US government is supporting. Wherever outspoken Arabs and Muslims have spoken up in New England, they have been attacked by the FBI, immigration authorities, and the court system until they are silenced by jail or deportation. Amer Jubran and Tarek Mehanna are two such examples.

On February 22nd, Charles Jacobs told the Brown Daily Herald :

“Syrian schools teach the country’s children a hatred of the West — “especially of Jews.”

In the Comment section of the Providence Journal Jacobs says:

“Here is a study that shows that Syrians learn to despise Jews in schoolrooms across the country. They also learn about being jihadis, anti-Chrisian, and anti-democracy. The reporter got several studies from me, but declined to look at them. So let the reader decide: http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/Syria/Syria2001.pdf ”

The study cited was put out in June 2001 by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, another friendly-sounding group, based in Israel. The Center is described by Miftah as “a Jewish organization with links to extremist and racist Israeli groups that advocate settlement activities in the Palestinian territories, expulsion (transfer) of Palestinians from their homeland, and claims that Palestinians are all ‘”terrorists’ and that peace with them is not possible.”

The Executive Summary of the study lists a number of offensive positions taken in the Syrian school curriculum. For example:

“Zionism is depicted as a racist and aggressive movement based on false assumptions that the Jews are one people connected to Palestine. Zionism exploits the Jewish religion in order to exercise control over vast areas of the Arab homeland.”

This is supposed to be the outrageous hate speech in Syrian textbooks. In fact, it’s the truth.

One Itamar Marcus is cited for his work in preparing the study. According to Sourcewatch, “in recent years Marcus has been making a living translating and disseminating defamatory communications against Israel, extracted by his staff from Palestinian publications. Marcus, a settler, used to work for David Bar Illan, Benjamin Netanyahu’s PR chief.”

Below are other examples cited in the study as outrageous teaching of hatred in Syrian textbooks:

“An Arab people is uprooted from its land and incoming strangers are used by Imperialism and Zionism as a tool of oppression against the liberation movements in the region.” (Reader and Literary Texts, Grade 7, p. 207)

“Our land was invaded by alien people who had come from distant lands…” (Reader, Grade 5, pt. 2, p. 45)

“The Zionists… had homes in their distant homelands… [but] the oppressors insisted on taking our own home.” (“The Small Lemon Tree”, Short Stories, Grade 5, p. 12)

All true, and richly so. It would be a good antidote to the ignorance about Israeli racism in the US if such textbooks could be brought into US schools. We should be thankful to the study authors for letting us know about them.

Underscoring another method of Israeli propaganda — the importance of constant fear, The Brown Daily Herald reports:

“We will not bow to tyranny and evil,” said former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-MI, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who joined Americans for Peace and Tolerance at the State House. “There will be no more Boston massacres, no more San Bernardinos.”

This is where Israeli propaganda dovetails with highly charged political events staged by darker forces within the Israel and US governments. The real Boston massacre was in 1770; the fake Boston massacre was in 2013. San Berdardino was also a false flag. So was 9–11. These events are now earning their keep by becoming valid coin in support of the war on terror. Their purpose was to under-gird the phoniest war in human history, as planned by the neocons working for Israel in the US. Without these staged events, Rep. Hoekstra would have no sound bite, and Americans for Peace and Tolerance would have no fear with which to threaten us.

Israeli propaganda is conducted with a sophisticated understanding of human psychology and culture. Its inversion of reality mixes us up by confronting us with the unthinkable. Would an organization professing noble goals actually promote lies? Could people who claim to be victims actually be aggressors? Could people in positions of authority plan massive attacks on innocent people in order to make us hate their political enemy? Could that enemy have been created out of whole cloth for decades on end? Could someone who says they’re against hate actually be in the business of causing hate? Could people smeared with the “canards” of owning the banks and media actually be guilty of these canards? Were these canards defined as such in order to preempt accusation? Could government officials, who appear to be sane, actually be psychopaths capable of committing false flags? Is it crazy to believe these things when the rest of the world apparently doesn’t?

According to the mainstream press, one of the alleged attackers during the November 13, 2015 Paris false flag allegedly said, “This is for Syria!”  Here is the feat: Get the public to associate a monstrous mass murder with the legitimate cause of Syria, a nation under relentless outside attack, and you destroy any sympathy for that cause, vilify anyone who might speak in favor of it, justify unheard-of police repression, and further the original war on terror, all at the same time. A complete and utterly cynical deception.

Israeli agents such as Charles Jacobs exploit the meme of victimhood established long ago for Jewish people in order to further the attack being carried out by Zionists against those who really are victims – in this case, the Syrians who have had to flee their attacks, their attempt to steal more Arab land, and, it would seem, their attempt to rule the world.

Richard Hugus, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has a blog at https://richardhugus.wordpress.com/ .

See also: Zionism in Boston

 

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Syrian deception: on the Balkanization of the Greater Middle East

By Catherine Shakdam | American Herald Tribune | February 25, 2016

If Western capitals and their international agencies have long decried sectarianism, and all other form of overt xenophobia, may it revolve around ethnicity, social class, gender, politics or faith, those powers have nevertheless leaned on elitism and selectivity to carry both their war propaganda and narrative in the Middle East.

I would personally argue that much of the hatred we have seen rise in the MENA – Middle East and Northern Africa, over the past decades, stem from Western powers’ desire to fragment, divide and segregate to better manipulate nations, and play communities against each other. This grand Balkanization of the Middle East the Yinon Plann laid out in the 1980s was not just another political exercise … it appears evident today that at its heart, such strategy spoke socio-political and sectarian engineering, before any real geographical re-arrangement. Beyond a simple game of border drawing, the Yinon Plan aimed to rise an Empire on the ashes of both a civilization, and a history – to hell with the consequences.

It was Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in 2011 who best summarized the Yinon Plan, when he wrote: “[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.”

The strategy, which was later on championed under another name by US Vice President Joe Biden to accelerate the break-up of Iraq into three separate entities: Shia, Kurds and Sunnis, provisions for a division of the Greater Middle East along both ethnic and sectarian lines, to better play into those ideological divisions which regional powers have wielded to assert their power. Amid a fragmented MENA, Israel would rise a Titan, not just militarily, but politically, as it would benefit from the absolute back-up of all Western capitals – if need be through coercion.

“The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran,” wrote Darius Nazemroaya, before he added: “The Atlantic, in 2008, and the US military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.”

Interesting how our modern wars have followed the very pattern enounced once upon a 1982 by Zionist Israel …

But how is the Yinon Plan fitting into Syria’s humanitarian crisis, and Western powers’ propensity to selectively wave outrage before ever so pliable corporate media? Well … for one Syria’s humanitarian crisis’ make-up follows the very same pattern of division and ethno-sectarianism.

Entire regions of Syria have been ignored, neglected, and de facto sold out to the barbarism of Terror’s armies on account its communities follow Shia Islam, or Yezidism. Besieged by Wahhabi radicals, victimized and persecuted, those poor souls were never offered the courtesy of a whisper in the press … why such blindness if not an admission of guilt?

I recall rather clearly how loudly corporate media stumped their feet over Madaya – the lambasting and the delirious outrage against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over allegations he was purposely starving a city to command their submission.  How silent media have been since it was proven that Madaya’s tragedy was in fact not President al-Assad’s making; but those militias’ the West has learnt to call “friendly” in its pursuit of regime change.

In a report for The Independent, Robert Fisk paints a reality too many journalists have sought to avoid – whether for financial comfort or ethical apathy.

Mr Fisk writes:

“This is the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages [Nubl and Zahra] in northern Syria. Although their recapture by the Syrian army – and by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi Shia militias – caught headlines for a few hours three weeks ago, the world paid no heed to the suffering of these people, their 1,000 “martyrs”, at least half of them civilians, and the 100 children who died of shellfire and starvation.”

There are many other villages like Nubl and Zahra today which suffer the same pain, and the same radical evil … yet their stories have never been told – worse still, their courage, and their resistance in the face of absolute infamy have never been celebrated.

Blinded by media lies, the public has forgotten that Syria’s war is in fact NOT a civil war, but a war against Terror – which Terror Western powers, and their regional allies: Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the lead, have been only too zealous to enable.

2011 Revolution was but a cover for a very violent takeover aimed at fragmenting Syria. To manifest such explosion of Syria’s sovereignty, war would need first to exacerbate sectarian and ethnic tensions, to then justify Balkanization.

First came Iraq, then Syria, and Libya … which nation will fall next to the madness of the Yinon Plan? From the looks of it, Egypt stands on shaky ground … the last potent military power in a long list of disappeared apparatus.

While war might not be in Egypt’s cards, its make-up does not allow for much sectarianism or ethno-centrism after all, there are many ways to break a country: economically, socially, politically etc …

How is Egypt’s economy faring these days?

As we look at Syria, as we observe the stand of a nation against covert imperialism we would do well to remember those strings being pulled in the darkness.

It is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran who often warned against “the real enemies”, those powers which from afar wield Takfirism to manifest the rising of a new socio-political order.

Will we dare see?

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Its Parliament

By Jonathon Cook | CounterPunch | February 25, 2016

Nazareth – Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is drafting legislation that ought to resolve in observers’ minds the question of whether Israel is the democracy it proudly claims to be. The bill empowers a three-quarters majority of the parliament to oust a sitting MP.

It breathes new life into the phrase “tyranny of the majority”. But in this case, the majority will be Jewish MPs oppressing their Palestinian colleagues.

Netanyahu has presented the bill as a necessary response to the recent actions of three MPs from the Balad faction of the Joint List, a coalition of parties representing the often-overlooked fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian citizens.

He claims the MPs “sided with terror” this month when they visited Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem who have been waiting many months for Israel to return relatives’ bodies.

The 11 dead are among those alleged to have carried out what are termed “lone-wolf” attacks, part of a recent wave of Palestinian unrest. Fearful of more protests, Israel has demanded that the families bury the bodies in secret, without autopsies, and in plots outside Jerusalem.

There is an urgent moral and political issue about Israel using bodies as bargaining chips to encourage Palestinian obedience towards its illegal occupation.

But the three Palestinian MPs also believed they were under an obligation to help the families by adding to the pressure on the Netanyahu government to return the bodies.

Israel’s Palestinian minority has a severely degraded form of citizenship, but it enjoys more rights than Palestinians living under occupation.

When a video of their meeting the families was posted online, however, the Israeli right seized on the chance to defame the MPs. A parliamentary “ethics” committee comprising the main Jewish parties suspended the three MPs for several months. Now they face losing their seats.

This is part of a clear trend. Late last year the government outlawed the northern Islamic Movement, a popular extra-parliamentary political, religious and welfare organisation.

Despite Netanyahu’s statements that the movement was linked to “terror”, leaks to the Israeli media showed his intelligence chiefs had advised him weeks before the ban that there was no evidence to support such accusations.

At the time many Palestinians in Israel suspected Netanyahu would soon turn his sights on the Palestinian parties in the parliament. And so he has.

Balad, which decries Israel’s status as a Jewish state and noisily campaigns for democratic reform, was always likely to be top of his list.

In every recent general election, an election committee dominated by the Jewish parties has banned Balad or its leaders from standing, only to see the Israeli courts reverse the decision.

Now Netanyahu is legislating the expulsion of Balad and throwing down a gauntlet to the courts.

It won’t end there. If Balad is unseated, the participation of the other Joint List factions will be untenable. In effect, the Israeli right is seeking to ethnically cleanse the parliament.

For those who doubt such intentions, consider that two years ago the government raised the electoral threshold for entry to the parliament specifically to exclude the Palestinian factions.

The intention was to empty the parliament of its Palestinian representatives. But these factions put aside their historic differences to create the Joint List.

Netanyahu, who had hoped to see the back of the Palestinian parties at last year’s general election, inadvertently transformed them into the third biggest party. That was the context for his now-infamous warning during the campaign that “the Arabs are coming out in droves to vote”.

The current crackdown on Palestinian parties may finally burst the simplistic assumption – widely accepted in the west – that Israel is a democracy – and not least because its Palestinian minority has the vote.

This argument was always deeply misguided. After Israel’s creation in 1948, officials gave citizenship and the vote to the few Palestinians remaining inside the new borders precisely because they were a small and weak minority.

In exiling 80 per cent of Palestinians from their homeland, Israel effectively rigged its national electoral constituency to ensure there would be a huge Jewish majority in perpetuity.

A Palestinian MP, Ahmed Tibi, summed it up neatly. Israel, he said, was a democratic state for Jews, and a Jewish state for its Palestinian citizens.

In truth, the vote of Palestinian citizens was only ever meant as window-dressing. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, assumed that the rump Palestinian population would be swamped by Jewish immigrants flooding into the new state.

He miscalculated. The Palestinian minority had a far higher birth rate and maintained its 20 per cent proportion of the population.

None of that would matter had the Palestinian representatives quietly accepted their position as shop-window mannequins.

But in recent years, as Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has grown ever weaker, confined to small enclaves of the West Bank, the Palestinian MPs in Israel have taken up some of the slack.

That was why the Balad MPs met the Jerusalem families. The PA, barred by Israel from East Jerusalem, has been looking on helplessly as the families have been desperately trying to get their loved ones’ bodies back.

This month Mr Netanyahu said he would surround Israel with walls to keep out the neighbourhood’s “wild beasts”. In his view, there are also wild beasts to be found in Israel’s parliament – and he is ready to erect walls to keep them out too.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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