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Canada’s ‘Remembrance Day’: righteous or rancorous?

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | November 8, 2014

With Canada’s annual “Remembrance Day” just around the corner, it would be wise to broach the issue of “remembering” those Canadians who fought and died in the two bloodiest conflicts in world history with some humility and skepticism.

On November 11 Canadians across the political spectrum will evoke their plastic patriotism by commemorating war veterans who fought in the First and Second World Wars. The obedient masses will blindly recite jingoist platitudes and regurgitate outdated wartime propaganda that has been instilled in the minds of each and every Canadian citizen since birth.

Like Americans and Britons, most Canadians believe that World War I and II were quintessential “good wars” fought to secure “freedom and democracy” and other such flimsy fantasies. Most people reared in Canada’s degraded education system foolishly believe that this country’s participation in WWI and WWII was “the right thing to do” and that the outbreak of such wars was “inevitable.” Without doing one scintilla of actual research, the gullible masses can tell you why these fratricidal wars that caused the deaths of untold millions of people were “necessary” and “just.”

Do any of these ignorant zombies stop for a moment to think about what they are promoting? The “necessity” of an enormous bloodbath that plunged much of the world into pandemonium? Following WWII, Canadian society has evidently devolved into a brain-damaged loony-bin filled to the brim with parrots and yes-men incapable of independent thought or critical analysis.

The fact is that Canada was not attacked in World War I or II. Positioned between two gigantic oceans, Canada is relatively safe geographically from foreign invasion and therefore had no real incentive to fight in either war. So why did Canada fight?

In his book The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Yves Engler discerns that Ottawa’s decision to go to war in 1914 and again in 1939 was essentially “because Britain went to war.” Indeed, as a de facto colony of Britain, Canada has only ever had a ceremonial facade of independence throughout its history. When London decided to go to war, Canada immediately followed suit, revealing the country’s blind subservience to the Crown.

And what was Britain’s reasoning for going to war the second time around? The brainwashed masses will say that “Nazism” was a grave and pressing danger and had to be stopped. But only if one is viewing the world through British or Jewish spectacles does that suggestion have any merit. As far as much of the global East and South were concerned, British imperialism was a far greater threat than anything posed by Hitler’s regional ambitions. From the perspective of the Arabs of Palestine and the Middle East, Jewish Zionism and its British imperial patrons were a worse adversary than Hitler’s Germany by a long shot. Germans were not the ones brutally occupying and suppressing the people of Palestine for the past two decades leading up to WWII, it was the English (and later the Zionist Jews).

Disgracefully, Canada still has major streets named after the British WWII leader Winston Churchill, a pugnacious warmongering drunkard who did everything in his power to guarantee the destruction of millions of German civilians. At one point during the war, the lunatic British statesman drew up plans to use the lethal anthrax chemical as a hellish bio-weapon against Germany, an act of unconscionable malice that would have rendered the whole of central Europe an uninhabitable toxic wasteland. Fortunately, Churchill’s military advisors talked some sense into the primitive dolt when he sobered up, so he never followed through with the maniacal strategy. However, he did succeed in annihilating hundreds of thousands of German civilians in what Chris Floyd of The Moscow Times described as “massive conventional bombing raid[s] on the enemy’s capital[s], also aimed at civilians, designed to ‘castrate’ the enemy population.”

In a ZoomerTV documentary entitled “Unlikely Obsession: Churchill and the Jews,” various commentators, all of whom are either Jewish or philosemitic, note Winston Churchill’s intimate relations with Britain’s Jewish-Zionist community throughout his political career, especially the moneyed elite among the Jews. One commentator unwittingly reveals the real causes underpinning Churchill’s bellicose stance towards Germany: he was on the payroll of wealthy Jews who bailed him out of his financial quandaries. The Zionist-produced documentary in essence recognizes that Churchill put the interests of Jews above those of Britain and its people, and that his unrelenting confrontation with Hitler and National Socialism was in large part spurred by the Jewish-Zionist financiers who kept the taps from going dry at Churchill’s residence.

“I am, of course, a Zionist,” said Churchill in 1956, “and have been ever since the Balfour Declaration.” (New York Times, Nov. 6, 1991.) The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a British government decree, addressed to a House of Rothschild baron, which promised to help the Zionists establish a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine. But what is routinely left out of this equation is that Balfour’s sordid pledge to fulfill the Zionist dream was, according to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, secured by way of “persistent propaganda, through unceasing demonstration of the life force of our people.” Weizmann went on to say: “We [Zionists] told the responsible authorities: We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not. You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world.” (Judische Rundschau (Jewish Review), Jan. 16, 1920.)

In other words, the Zionists bribed and perhaps blackmailed the British elite into gifting them Palestine. They did this by promising to use their economic and political clout to drag the United States into the First World War, thereby helping turn the tide of the war in favour of Britain. And they succeeded in doing so. Weizmann later boastfully acknowledged this amazing fact of history in a revealing 1941 letter to Winston Churchill. “It was the Jews,” Weizmann stated unequivocally in the letter, “who, in the last war, effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favour of Great Britain. They are keen to do it – and may do it – again.” Weizmann insisted that the Jews would once again gladly form the backbone of the British war effort against Germany and Italy, telling Churchill that, “There is only one big ethnic group which is willing to stand, to a man, for Great Britain, and a policy of ‘all-out-aid’ for her: the five million American Jews.” (A transcript of this letter is available at David Irving’s website)

In his informative essay “The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 1,” writer Thomas Dalton quotes a shameless Churchill who proudly conceded this point, stating in July 1922: “Pledges and promises were made during the War… They were made because it was considered they would be of value to us in our struggle to win the War. It was considered that the support which the Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage.” To solidify this notion, Dalton goes on to quote former British Prime Minister Lloyd George, himself a Christian Zionist, who similarly confessed: “The Zionist leaders gave us a definite promise that, if the Allies committed themselves to… a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause.  They kept their word.” (Dalton’s essay can be found on the Inconvenient History website) One may wonder why mainstream historiography of this period is reluctant to mention Britain’s acquiescence to Zionist demands vis-à-vis Palestine and its role in escalating both world wars to cataclysmic proportions.

Zionists duly acknowledged and praised Churchill’s role as an underling and workhorse for Zionism thereafter. In 1954, American Zionists endowed Churchill with the “Theodore Herzl Award” for his “outstanding” pro-Zionist work ethic. Churchill was an “architect of the Jewish State and protagonist of Zionism,” declared representatives of the Zionist Organization of America who bestowed the disreputable “honour” upon the self-interested British politician. (The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, Dec. 25, 1954) In 2012, an Israeli group erected a statue of Churchill in Jerusalem. A spokesman of the group, Anthony Rosenfelder, described Churchill as “a passionate Zionist all his life and a philo-semite.” (The Independent, Nov. 3, 2012.)

Decades of intense Allied propaganda cannot dispute these facts which expose the hidden truth that Britain, Canada, the US, France and the rest of the Allied Powers fought and died by the millions for reasons alien to their jurisdictions. It was not in the national interests of any of these countries to sacrifice large amounts of blood and treasure to fight a wholly avoidable conflict that offered not even a semblance of economic, cultural or national benefit.

Neither WWI nor WWII were “good” or “just” wars by any stretch of the imagination. On the contrary, they were both catastrophic blunders that set the whole of Europe and Asia as well as parts of the Middle East and North Africa ablaze. The Second World War in particular delivered the world into the hands of the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire, thereby sealing the eternal fate of humanity as drone-like economic cogs and geopolitical cannon fodder for American, British and Jewish interests.

With all things considered, “Remembrance Day” amounts to little more than a glorification of war and an exercise in jingoism and self-aggrandizement. It re-enforces the insulting myth of the “good” and “necessary” wars. It encourages the refusal to recognize the wrongs committed by “our side” in those bloody conflicts. This ‘day of reverence’ for our soldiers acts as a mind control mechanism to deceive the public into believing that our government has always acted benevolently and in the interests of the people, when in fact the opposite is true.

Copyright 2014 Brandon Martinez

November 9, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Critics Slam US Military’s ‘Disturbing’ Praise for Israel’s Gaza Offensive

Palestinians collect their belongings from under the rubble of a residential tower, which was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on August 24, 2014. (Photo: UN Photo-Shareef Sarhan/flickr/cc)
Common Dreams | November 7, 2014

Critics say it is “shameful” that a high-ranking U.S. military official suggested the Pentagon can learn lessons from Israel’s 50-day attack on Gaza this summer.

According the Jerusalem Post, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey made statements Thursday praising the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) for taking “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties” during Operation Protective Edge.

Dempsey told an audience at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: “We sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza.” He referred to the group of officers as the “lessons learned team.”

But Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said Israel’s tactics should not be replicated.

“It is very disturbing and shameful that U.S. military commanders believe that what Israel did in Gaza is something to be applauded,” Kudaimi told Common Dreams. “Five hundred dead children does not seem to be evidence that Israel was trying to not kill civilians. The seven-year siege on Gaza is not a policy to avoid civilian suffering.”

Israel’s recent seven-week military assault on Gaza killed at least 2,194 Palestinians, at least 75 percent of them civilians and over 500 of them children.

“At least 80 percent of the 100,000 Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed were refugee homes,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports.

The offensive damaged or destroyed over half of Gaza’s hospitals and health centers at a time when more than 11,000 were wounded, a UNRWA and World Health Organization joint investigation found.

Israel struck six UN schools sheltering Palestinians, including in cases where exact coordinates of the shelters were formally submitted by UNRWA to the Isreali military. These strikes alone killed at least 47 people and wounded hundreds.

Furthermore, Israel has been accused of potential war crimes by Amnesty International and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

“It is very despicable that the U.S. continues to white-wash Israeli crimes while funding them through military aid,” said Kudaimi. “Dempsey’s statements are not shocking. Anyone who follows U.S. military policy, knows they too have problematic definitions of protecting civilians.”

November 8, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel to confiscate 3,200 acres of Palestinian land near Jerusalem

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Ma’an – 08/11/2014

JERUSALEM – Israeli authorities have delivered orders to the village of Beit Iksa north of Jerusalem ordering the confiscation of 12,852 dunums (3,176 acres) of Palestinian land, locals said on Saturday.

Locals told Ma’an that soldiers deployed at the military checkpoint at the entrance to the village delivered confiscation orders signed by the Israeli military commander in the West Bank Nitzan Alon that gave them until Dec. 31, 2017 to remain on their land.

Villagers said that soldiers informed them that an official from the Israeli military liaison would arrive on Monday to specify which lands would be confiscated, adding that the lands confiscated would be used for “military purposes.”

If carried out, the confiscation would dramatically reduce the land available to Beit Iksa’s 1,700 people, the majority of whom are refugees who fled to the area in 1967 after the existing population of the village was forced to flee by Israeli authorities.

Although located immediately next to Jerusalem, the village’s lands have been progressively confiscated and the village is surrounded on all sides by the Israeli separation wall. Villagers can no longer travel to Jerusalem without permits, and Palestinians not resident in Beit Iksa cannot enter the single Israeli checkpoint that allows access to the village.

Ninety-three percent of the village is under full Israeli military control, and a majority of the total land of the village falls in areas outside of the separation wall, meaning they have been de facto confiscated, including about 1,500 dunums (371 acres) where Jewish-only settlements have been built.

The head of the Beit Iksa village council Saada al-Khatib told Ma’an that according to the order and the maps that soldiers had shown them Saturday, the lands that will be confiscated are between parcels 7 and 8 and include Haraeq al-Arab, Thahr Biddu, Numus, and Khatab areas around the village.

Al-Khatib added that the Israeli authorities claim that the confiscation order has been under way since 2012, and that the new order issued on Saturday only emphasizes the old order.

The order will prevent dozens of farmers from reaching their lands, he said, calling upon Palestinian ministries and national institutions to support the village of Beit Iksa and its neighbors.

He added that the order came after the Israeli municipality announced the approval of 244 housing units to be built in the Ramot settlement, which was previously built on lands confiscated from the settlement.

Al-Khatib warned that the land confiscation orders being issued to many villages include his own aim to carry out the “Judaization” of Beit Iksa after sealing the village shut and surrounding it with a checkpoint and the separation wall, turning it into an 2,500-dunum prison.

November 8, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Peace Process Hustle

By Lawrence Davidson | To The Point Analyses | November 7, 2014

Intractable Process

An intractable process, one that never seems to resolve itself, is either no process at all or a fraudulent one contrived to hide an ulterior motive. The so-called Israeli-Palestinian (at one time the Israeli-Arab) “peace process,” now in its sixth decade (counting from 1948) or fourth decade (counting from 1967) is, and probably always has been, just such a fraud.

One might object and say that the Oslo Accords (1993) were part of this process and they were not fraudulent. In my opinion that is a doubtful assumption. The talks were carried on in secret by officials who, at least on the Israeli side, never had an equitable peace in mind. Their goal was a political modification of the occupied territories that would free Israel from its legal obligations as occupiers of Palestinian territory and facilitate the pacification of the Palestinians and their resistance organizations. The Israeli side seemed to have believed that negotiating the return of Yasser Arafat and Fatah to the West Bank would provide them a partner in this process – not a peace process, but a pacification process.

It did not take long for the Palestinians to see through this gambit, and relations with the Israelis soon returned to the tense and sometimes violent status quo ante. It was only after Arafat’s suspicious death in 2004 that the Israelis finally got a Palestinian “leader,” in the person of Mahmoud Abbas, who would cooperate with them in this process of pacification. Organized resistance then became the pursuit of those in Gaza who persist in calling the “peace process” a fraud. They are correct.

“Detached from Reality”

The present Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and some of his ministers have, of late, hinted at the truth. Netanyahu recently told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that criticism of his government’s expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem (which are illegal under international law), whether it comes from the U.S. government or Jewish groups such as J Street and Peace Now, are “words detached from reality” and “foster false statements [of hope] from the Palestinians,” therefore delaying the coming of “peace.”

Likewise, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, has accused Palestinian “president” Abbas, the very man who helps Israel pacify the West Bank population, of “promoting hatred of Jews.” Why? Because Abbas has complained at the United Nations and other world forums of Israel’s unwillingness to bring the “peace process” to a conclusion that he and his Palestine National Council could accept. Abbas, who lost the last Palestinian free election (held in 2006) to Hamas, but with U.S. and Israeli support has usurped the office of Palestinian president, is actually a nearly perfect “peace partner” for the Israelis. The amount of compromise he asks for from the Israeli side in exchange for coming to terms is embarrassingly minimal. However, Netanyahu’s government refuses the Palestinians any compromise at all because, for these Zionists, the “peace process” is a facade whose only value lies in its very fraudulence. Its only value is as a cover for the process of territorial absorption.

Thus, it is probably justified to conclude that a good number of Israelis (and certainly a vast majority of their leadership) are not interested in peace, and probably have never been, unless you define peace as total Palestinian surrender. More accurately, they are interested in expansion and control of all of Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. After six decades of a “peace process” going nowhere, anyone who does not understand this is deluding themselves.

Self-Delusion

Just who are those deluding themselves? Many of them are diaspora Jews who are, whether they understand it or not, caught in a contradiction: they are at once committed to Zionism’s ideological goal of a secure Jewish state in Palestine, but nonetheless are, at this moment of maximum Israeli power, calling for ideological compromise. Some of these people are members of Zionist groups in the U.S. such as Peace Now and J Street. Both organizations want continuing peace negotiations with the Palestinians looking toward achieving some variation of the two-state solution. J Street is apparently upset with Netanyahu’s determination to continue the colonization process “in every part of Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank) as well as East Jerusalem because to do so “erects one obstacle to peace after another.”

Unfortunately, the history of official Zionist behavior is on the side of Netanyahu. All the evidence indicates that Zionism and its leaders have been committed to the conquest of all of historic Palestine at least since 1918. In that year Chaim Weizmann submitted a map of the proposed Jewish national home to the Peace Conference that settled matters after World War I. It represented a maximalist program that has been incrementally realized first in 1948 and then 1967. Nowhere in the Zionist program has there ever been room for voluntary retreat. That is why Prime Minister Netanyahu describes those who criticize his colonization efforts as “detached from reality.”

Conclusion

Netanyahu and his ilk, however, tend to ignore the fact that there are multiple realities operating here. Certainly, one should not forget the Palestinian reality, particularly that of Gaza, and Israeli culpability in its creation and maintenance. On the Zionist side there now exists at least two realities. One is certainly that of Prime Minister Netanyahu – the reality of the Zionist ideologue with Israeli power backing it up. But then there is the other Zionist reality – that of Israel’s increasing isolation, not only diplomatic and cultural, but also, over time, economic. The latter reality scares many diaspora Jews to the point where they are willing to compromise maximalist ideological goals.

The Zionists in power are as yet impervious to this fear. However, if the reality of economic and cultural isolation ever overtakes that of Israeli power, then the number of compromisers will rapidly grow, and the zealots such as Netanyahu will find themselves alone in a Masada-like fortress of their own making.

November 7, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Al-Arabiya echoes Zionist rhetoric in reporting about al-Aqsa

By Zeinab Hawi | Al-Akhbar | November 6, 2014

It was rather normal for Al-Arabiya news channel to retract its story about the unprecedented closure of al-Aqsa Mosque on October 28. The channel may have thought that the terminology it used would go unnoticed. However, Al-Arabiya later deleted the story from its website after having caused an online backlash for echoing Zionist rhetoric.

In an act further promoting Zionist terminology, the Saudi news channel replaced al-Aqsa Mosque with the “the holy compound,” a term usually reserved for Zionists in their reference to the holy site.

In fact, Israel had closed the mosque following the shooting of hardline Rabbi Yehuda Glick [allegedly] by Palestinian Mutaz Hijazi, with Al-Arabiya reporting the news as, “A right-wing Israeli activist was shot and wounded last night as he left a conference promoting a campaign to permit both Jews and Muslims to pray at the holy compound.”

The channel, hence, adopted the terminology used by Zionists. This caused an angry backlash over social media websites, with activists accusing Al-Arabiya of committing “political and religious treason” by adhering to the “Zionist plan” to Judaize Palestine.

However, after thoroughly reading Al-Arabiya’s report, one would notice that the channel not only resorted to Zionist terms, but framed the story in a manner that reflected the channel’s policy that complies with Zionism. The term “occupation” did not appear, not even by chance, and the channel opted to use “Israeli police” instead. Moreover, the story depicted Jewish hardliners present at al-Aqsa on an equal footing with Palestinians.

The story was hence reported as follows, “the Israeli police closed the Noble Sanctuary… in a rare step aiming to prevent clashes between Muslims and Jews.”

The hardline rabbi who was calling to “open the doors of the Noble Sanctuary for Jews” and promoting “prayers that gather both Muslims and Jews” is for Al-Arabiya a simple “right- wing Israeli activist.”

The scandalous coverage did not stop there; it also “reassured” that the Palestinian shooter – “the sole suspect” in the incident – was shot and killed by a police special force unit at his house in Abu al-Thuri neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Al-Arabiya did not settle for such biased reporting, it also quoted the director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center as saying that the rabbi is in “critical but stable” condition and that he underwent surgery after being shot in the chest and abdomen.

The closure of the al-Aqsa Mosque apparently meant nothing for the Saudi channel. It was more interested in reassuring the public about the health of the injured Zionist and making sure that the shooter “got what he deserved.”

In the end, it is not merely about adopting the Zionist settlers’ policy to change the understanding of the issue and the terminology used to define it, but it is about adopting a process aimed at wiping out the cause of not just a people but an entire nation, which the Saudi channel and its affiliates are slowly paving the way for.

November 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces demolish three houses, and several water pipes and roads in village near Nablus

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Sofian Maher and a local resident near their destroyed home near Khirbet Al-Tawil
International Solidarity Movement | November 4, 2014

Khirbet Al-Tawil, Occupied Palestine – Early on Monday morning, while the inhabitants of the village of Khirbet Al-Tawil, near Aqraba (Nablus), were sleeping, eight military vehicles, and 30-40 Israeli soldiers entered the village.

Within two hours the military had demolished three houses, and several water pipes and roads.

The water pipes destroyed were new and scheduled to be turned on Monday. The Aqraba community had funded these water pipes as part of the municipal water system.

Of their destruction, Sami Dariyah, stated: “They are trying to prevent people from living in this area. This is their clear policy.”

Due to the continuing demolition of houses, electricity lines, water lines and other living necessities, the farmers have fled to the city of Aqraba and departed their lands in Khirbet Al-Tawil. Sami Direyah grew up near Khirbet Al-Tawil and remembers the many houses and shops that used to be there.

Khirbet Al-Tawil is part of Area C (under full Israeli military civil and security control), which means the army can choose which buildings and activities are ‘allowed’. Sami wonders how their existing community, their farms and their 100-year-old houses, can suddenly become illegal.

Even though the three demolished houses were nearly 100 years old, dating back to the British occupation, they were all still active homes for families like the Mahers. The residents of the houses were not given any warning of the military’s planned visit. Sofian Maher, a former resident of one of these homes, spoke to ISM and explained that this is not the first time the military has paid a visit to Khirbet Al-Tawil. In May of this year the village’s Mosque was demolished, together with four houses, four cottages, and two barns. Less than one month ago the power line was cut by the military, leaving the village without electricity.

Sofian Maher explained to ISM that his family tried to rebuild their house after it was demolished in May. While rebuilding, Sofian’s family lived in a donated tent, which the army soon tore down. The family then moved into old stone huts that were built, long ago, to house animals while shepherding. Periodically the military returned and destroyed the newly rebuilt portions of their house.

The family is now trying to rebuild their home for the fourth time.

To further make the area uninhabitable, the military has destroyed large sections of the road leading to the remaining farms.

November 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza residents lose faith in international aid

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MEMO | November 6, 2014

It has been more than three months since the end of the war on Gaza however Fadl Misbah, 41, is still living as others are, in a house which is covered in plastic sheets and which is not suitable for winter.

Fadl, whose family is made up of 13 members, said: “We are always subjected to extreme cold, and this is the case for most people whose homes were destroyed in the war. My children sit in this place and raindrops fall from the roof of the house which is made up of nylon sheets which do not protect us from the elements or the cold.”

“We have heard a lot about the donor conference to reconstruct Gaza, however they are working so slowly and we no longer believe what the international institutions are saying or what they are promising.”

“The occupation is the main problem; it allowed 440 tonnes of cement to enter Gaza 20 days ago during [UN Secretary-General] Ban Ki-moon’s visit to show a positive side to itself in front of the world, but after that it didn’t allow any more items into Gaza. Solving our problem will need contracts to be signed, and that’s if it is resolved at all,” Fadl said.

“International institutions have appealed to intervene and find a solution to this disaster, which hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed during the war on Gaza are now living through.

The West must be mobilise itself and not be satisfied by its silence. Those who call for human rights and advocate for it on behalf of those who are oppressed have exposed this world. It has no credibility.”

November 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Dozens injured during Aqsa clashes, several detained

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Ma’an – November 5, 2014

JERUSALEM – Dozens of Palestinians suffered tear-gas inhalation and several others were injured by stun grenades, shrapnel and rubber-coated steel bullets during clashes in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound area on Wednesday, an official said.

Palestinian Red Crescent official Amin Abu Ghazaleh told Ma’an that Red Crescent ambulances moved nine injured to the Al-Maqased Hospital where their injuries were reported as moderate.

Two were injured in the eye, and 32 with stun grenades, shrapnel and rubber-coated steel bullets in addition to many who suffered severe gas inhalation.

Three Palestinian members of Israel’s Knesset, Hanin Zoabi, Talab Abu Arrar and Ibrahim Sarsour, were able to enter the mosque during the closure and clashes.

Israeli soldiers neared the Al-Qabali mosque inside the compound as they fired stun grenades and tear-gas bombs inside, the director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, said.

He said that a fire erupted inside the muezzin’s hall and cables and speakers were also burned and damaged.

Soldiers “deliberately” threw holy books on the floor, he alleged.

Israeli forces detained Tareq al-Hashlamon, an employee of the Islamic endowment department, after assaulting him inside Al-Aqsa, along with another endowment employee identified as Hussam Seder and three Palestinians.

Four Palestinians were also detained, one of them a minor. Two others were identified as Omar al-Kilani and Amin Qirsh.

Meanwhile, Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel over the violence.

Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur asked the foreign minister to “recall the Jordanian ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest at Israel’s escalation on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound,” the Petra news agency reported.

The clashes came amid continued tensions over right-wing Jewish demands to be able to pray inside the compound despite being off-limits in mainstream Judaism, in addition to the expansion of Israeli settlement building in Palestinian East Jerusalem.

Earlier, a police spokeswoman said that “Dozens of masked protesters threw stones and firecrackers at security forces who then entered the Temple Mount and pushed the demonstrators back inside the mosque.”

November 5, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel guilty of war crimes over Turkish aid ship attack, ICC says

Al-Akhbar | November 5, 2014

Prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague have told a Turkish organization that Israel is guilty of “war crimes” for attacking a Turkish aid ship for Gaza in 2010.

In May of that year, Israeli commandos killed nine peaceful activists, eight Turkish nationals and an American of Turkish origin, in international waters by using lethal force on the Mavi Marmara, a ship participating in a “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which was under a seven-year Israeli blockade at the time.

The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a Turkish NGO, in a statement Tuesday said the prosecution team had finished its investigation in the Mavi Marmara case and concluded that Israel committed “war crimes.”

The aid ship Mavi Marmara belonged to the foundation, whose law committee had filed a petition at the court for a fair and speedy trial in the case. The court took up the petition in March 2014.

The 2010 incident caused international outrage and soured Turkish-Israeli ties.

In March 2014, Turkey received an apology from the Israeli government.

The two states are now looking to normalize their relations with a deal said to be involving compensation for the victims’ families.

The Palestinians have threatened to join the ICC to allow legal action to be taken against Israel.

Based in The Hague, the ICC opened its doors in 2003 and is the world’s first independent court set up to try the worst crimes, including genocide and war crimes.

In 2012, the Palestinians won the status of observer state in the United Nations, which gives them the ability to become a party to the ICC, where they could sue Israeli officials over alleged war crimes.

As neither Israel nor Palestine are ICC members, the court lacks jurisdiction over Gaza. This could be granted by a UN Security Council resolution, but Israel’s main ally, the United States, would probably veto any such proposal.

The overwhelming General Assembly vote recognizing the “non-member state” of Palestine was strongly opposed by the United States and Israel.

Membership of the ICC opens countries to investigations both on their behalf and against them. Several major powers, including the United States, as well as Israel, have declined to ratify the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute.

The Palestinians in 2009 and 2014 pushed the ICC’s prosecutor’s office to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

November 5, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

A Brief History of US-Israel Relations

How Zionists Outmaneuvered and Replaced State Department Experts

By Amb. ANDREW I. KILLGORE | CounterPunch | November 4, 2014

Alison Weir writes at the beginning of her book, Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel, that while many people are led to believe that U.S. support for Israel is driven by the American establishment and U.S. national interests, facts do not support that belief. The reality is that while for decades almost all U.S. experts opposed Israel and its founding, they were outmaneuvered and eventually replaced by Zionists.

Political Zionism started in the late 1800s as an international movement to establish a Jewish state somewhere in the world. By 1897 the movement was led by Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, who convened the First Zionist World Congress in Basel, Switzerland the same year. U.S. Zionism began in the 1880s. The Board of Delegates of American Israelites was organized in 1861. The group was strong enough during the American Civil War to block an effort by the Union to declare America a Christian nation.

In 1887 President Grover Cleveland appointed a Jewish ambassador to Turkey, establishing a precedent for naming a Jew to that post for the next 30 years. This represented the growing power of the Zionist movement. But in 1912, when the Zionist Literary Society asked President William Taft for an endorsement, Secretary of State Philander Knox was able to thwart the effort. Knox argued that Zionism “related to the interests of countries other than our own.”

But after Knox, simply every American official has opposed Zionist efforts to involve the United States on the same grounds: the efforts are against the interests of the United States. The Zionists were and are aware of this, so they always resorted to secrecy to conceal their real aims.

In 1912 the prominent U.S. attorney Louis Brandeis became head of the Zionist Central office, which had moved from Berlin, Germany a little while before. Brandeis is better known as a Supreme Court Justice, but he played a sinister role in
alison weir bookhigh Zionist affairs. He recruited young lawyers, particularly from Harvard, to work for the Zionist cause. He was a leader of a secret society called the Parushim to work for Zionism with all the outward appearance of simply a fraternal order. Each member took a practically blood oath to secretly work for Zionism.

When Brandeis was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson he officially resigned from all his clubs and affiliations. But this was only for show. Weir quotes historian/journalist Donald Neff: “Through his lieutenants he remained the power behind the throne. One of these lieutenants was the well-regarded Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, whose Zionist activities had largely gone unnoticed.”

Weir very astutely and brilliantly covers World War One and the Balfour Declaration (Britain promising to support a “national home” for Jews in Palestine). The Declaration was critical for Zionist success with the reason behind it, Zionism’s promise to work for the U.S. to enter the war on Britain’s side. Author Alison Weir writes that whether the Zionist role in getting America into the war was major, as the Zionists claim, and the British believed, is unclear.

In one of her quoted references Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first president of Israel, complains in his autobiography about the British/Zionist myth that he invented TNT, the reward for which was the Balfour Declaration. He said he did not invent the explosive. The origin of the TNT myth was an obvious attempt to cover up Britain’s real reason for issuing the declaration, which clearly was to get America into the war on Britain’s side, without which she would have lost the war.

Ms. Weir’s coverage of the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris is excellent. The Conference was rife with Zionists arguing for the Jewish state. The most prominent American opposing them was Dr. Howard Bliss, president of the Syrian Protestant College, later the American University of Beirut. President Wilson did send the King-Crane Commission to study what the Middle Easterners wanted. The two men found that the Arabs were utterly against the “national home” idea. It was clear that the Jewish representatives wanted a nearly complete dispossession of the Palestinians and that armed force would be required to carry out Zionist aims.

Throughout Judgment Alison Weir clearly documents the total lack of ethics and morality, as generally understood, on the part of the Zionists. For example, they fabricated stories of gross anti-Semitism in Poland to gain sympathy. When the American ambassador to Poland reported that they were false, Brandeis and Frankfurter claimed that the ambassador had undercut their mission. Frankfurter threatened that he would try to block his Senate confirmation.

The Zionists ran a gigantic public relations campaign targeting every sector of society, including particularly the Christians, who had little knowledge of the nature of Zionism or of its true goals. Thus the Zionists played on the “tragic plight of the refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home.” As anti-Zionist Rabbi Elmer Berger says in his memoirs, there was a “ubiquitous propaganda campaign reaching just about every point of political leverage of American life.”

It is important to emphasize that essentially all official American personnel opposed the Zionists. Foreign Service Officer Evan Wilson, U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, opposed them on national interests grounds. Loy Henderson, director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, wrote that supporting partition of Palestine “would have a strongly adverse effect on American interests throughout the Near and Middle East.” When Henderson persisted in putting his views forward, the Zionists attacked him viciously, calling him an “anti-Semite,” demanding his resignation and threatening his family. Henderson was transferred by President Harry Truman as ambassador to Nepal/India. The transfer of Henderson reflects the reality of what happens to Foreign Service officers who criticize Israel, even today.

Others who spoke warning words about Zionism and its adverse effect on American national interests were George F. Kennan, head of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff. He wrote that the 1947 partition plan for Palestine had done enormous damage to the U.S. Under Secretary of State (later Secretary) Dean Acheson said that to transform Palestine into a Jewish state would imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.

Judgment is prodigiously documented, with nearly 200 books and papers listed. Weir quotes two sources, one of them an Iraqi Jew, as writing that the Zionists terrorized Iraqi Jews into going to Israel by planting bombs in Baghdad synagogues, all to increase the population of Israel. Jews even killed Jews to force immigration to Israel.

In 1948 there was a battle between Secretary of State (General) George Marshall and Clark Clifford, political adviser to President Harry Truman, over Truman’s support for Zionism/Israel. Marshall argued for national interests, while Clifford argued for electoral politics. Marshall quit speaking to Clifford over their differences.

In April 1948, just before the State of Israel was established, Jewish terrorists attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, massacring 175 men, women and children. The facts spread quickly in Palestine and 750,000 refugees fled from their homes. The Zionists had anticipated the flight, leaving room for Jews in the evacuated homes and farms.

The ruthlessness of the Zionists is illustrated by the fate of Dorothy Thompson, “one of the most famous journalists of the 20th century,” according to the Britannica encyclopedia. Her columns were in newspapers all over the country, her radio program was heard by millions of people. She had been married to one of the most famous novelists (Babbitt), Sinclair Lewis.

Thompson had at first supported Zionism, but changed her mind when she saw Palestinian refugees. Then she was attacked as an anti-Semite, her columns were dropped from newspapers and her speaking engagements stopped. Today, Weir says, “She has been largely erased from history.”

Now that Israel has been around for more than 60 years and its virtues are sung in the American media, it is easy to forget, or not even to have heard, that the country is extremely adverse to American national interests and its policies enormously destructive and dangerous to America’s well-being. Thus Alison Weir must be highly commended for throwing such a brilliantly hard light on the relationship between the United States and Israel. I hope this marvelous book gets all the attention it deserves.

Ambassador Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and a retired diplomat who served as a career foreign service officer in Frankfurt, London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Amman, Baghdad, Dacca, Tehran, Manama, and Wellington and as a desk officer in other Near East and South Asia regional bureau positions in the State Department in Washington before his assignment as U.S. Ambassador in Doha. Ambassador Killgore received the “Foreign Service Cup” in 1997, the citation stating: “For impressive contributions to increased awareness and understanding of the Middle East and the many dimensions of United States’ interests in the area.”

November 4, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation authorities demolish two homes in East Jerusalem

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MEMO | November 4, 2014

Israel demolished two homes in Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, today claiming they were constructed without a license, eye witnesses said.

Eye witnesses reported that “a large bulldozer belonging to the Israeli municipality arrived this morning at Wadi Yasoul in Silwan accompanied by Israeli police and army forces.”

They added: “The Israeli forces surrounded the home of the released prisoner Khalil Abu Rajab and demolished it before demolishing Assem Abu Subaih’s home.”

Witnesses noted that the “demolition occurred without prior warning. There are concerns that more demolitions will take place in the area.”

“Abu Subaih’s home consists of three rooms and he lived in it with his five family members. As for Abu Rajab’s home, it was made up of two apartments he lived in with seven family members and his mother,” sources reported.

These demolitions occurred after Israeli media outlets reported a few days ago that the Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat approved a series of sanctions against Palestinians in the city, including demolishing unlicensed homes “in order to stop the phenomenon of throwing rocks”.

Various clashes between the Palestinian youth and Israeli forces have continued in a number of neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem since last July.

Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations noted that while the municipality has been increasingly giving building permits to Israelis in East Jerusalem, it is restricting construction work done by Palestinians, which forces many to build without permits.

The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’tselem) said: “While large-scale constructing and major investments are being carried out in Jewish neighbourhoods, the Israeli authorities are working on stifling all development and construction for Palestinian residents, which make up about a third of the city’s population.”

The Planning and Building Committee of the Israeli Ministry of Interior approved the construction of 500 settlement units in Ramat Shlomo settlement in Shuafat in northern Jerusalem yesterday which provoked Palestinian and international criticism.

November 4, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust

Review by Jessica Purkiss

The Girl Who Stole my Holocaust is essentially about an epiphany. Noam Chayut’s memoir charts his journey from a battle hardened soldier protecting an illegal occupation into a conscientious man who relentlessly confronts the injustice of that occupation. As the novel progresses through its 36 chapters the reader bears witness to the unravelling of Noam the Zionist, the enthusiastic IDF recruit and the military fundraiser.

The catalyst to this unravelling is a young girl who he encounters during a raid on a Palestinian village while he is still a soldier. The pure terror he sees in her face makes Noam realise that he is “playing the role of absolute evil in the play of her life”. The absolute evil that has governed his life, in the shadow of which he has grown up under- the Holocaust, begins to disintegrate.

The association of the Holocaust and the occupation is a daring one. It is also insightful – it demonstrates the role the historical victimhood of the Jewish people plays in the Israeli psyche. While the book is about Noam’s personal journey, it also tells us much about the hegemonic Israeli narrative.

Noam does not shy away from confronting his own racism and his actions as an Israeli soldier in a painfully honest manner. As he exposes the actions of others via testimonies collected as a member of Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-soldiers who seek to make people aware of the conduct of the Israeli military, he uncovers a sustained pattern of behaviour which makes up a whole system of abuse.

Noam ends his memoir with a letter to the young girl he encountered. It reads: “That’s probably why you think that my horror is inferior to yours. But know that my idea of absolute evil stretches beyond anything your wildest imagination could conceive.” The letter reads almost like a lecture to the wronged and an attempt to minimise the “absolute evil” she perceives. This cannot be Noam’s intention, for the rest of the book is deeply self-aware. In this one paragraph he has marred the memoir. This should, however, not deter anyone from reading what is a startling and brutally honest account of one Israeli soldier’s journey of questioning.

November 3, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

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