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How the Israel Lobby Works

By Philip Giraldi • The Unz Review • June 3, 2014

The major organizations that comprise the Israel Lobby are well known: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and Christians United For Israel (CUFI). All are well known, benefiting from large budgets and staffs. They are extremely effective, having excellent access to politicians and the media to promote their points of view, and are, as a group, regular visitors to the White House. AIPAC is without doubt the most powerful lobby in the United States that is focused on a foreign policy issue.

The institutional Israel boosters are in turn backed by a cluster of think tanks and institutes that spout a relentlessly pro-Likud line. They include Foundation for Defense of Democracies, The Emergency Committee for Israel, The American Enterprise Institute, The Hudson Institute, Brookings and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A recent op-ed at The National Interest (formerly the Nixon Center) “Why Israel Fears Containment of a Nuclear Iran,” written by two Israelis with government ties, illustrates to what extent spokesmen for Tel Aviv have access to the media across the political spectrum to make their points while contrary views rarely surface. It would be difficult to imagine a similar piece appearing advancing Iranian views on Israel, for example, and one might well question whose “National Interest” is being promoted by providing a platform to current or former foreign government officials.

And backing the think tanks up are the enablers in the media who suppress stories critical of Israel and consistently editorialize supporting policies favored by Tel Aviv. Israeli Ambassadors, uniquely, regularly write op-eds for publications like the Washington Post and The New York Times. Prominent among the consistently pro-Israel media are the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch publications in general and magazines like Mortimer Zuckerman owned US News and World Report, but it would be fair to say that nearly all mainstream media outlets are to some extent wary of offending Israel and its backers.

But as Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted in their groundbreaking expose of the Israel Lobby, the lobbying effort extends well beyond the organizational level to include friends of Israel who labor assiduously and voluntarily at state and local levels as well as at universities and from within professional organizations to maintain a positive viewpoint on Israel while promoting a negative narrative regarding its increasing number of critics. Most recently they have been focused on halting the growth of BDS, “boycott, divestment, and sanctions,” particularly in attempts to use “Lawfare” to make such activity illegal when it singles out Israel.

Israel’s friends quite rightly see Congress as their major ally in keeping the United States Israel-friendly, so much so that Pat Buchanan once dubbed America’s legislative body as “Israeli occupied territory.” And so it remains with legislation favorable to Israel passing by unanimous consent voice votes or grossly lopsided margins when a tally actually takes place. The White House too is into the charade that Israel is a major US ally and friend, in spite of mounting evidence that Tel Aviv consistently spies on Washington, is not interested in any peace process with the Palestinians and works against genuine American interests.

I have recently obtained a handout memo relating to a congressional race in Virginia that illustrates how the process works at the political entry level. Congressman Jim Moran has announced that he will not seek reelection in the heavily Democratic district that encompasses Alexandria Virginia. Moran has fallen afoul of the pro-Israel establishment by telling attendees at a 2003 antiwar forum, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” He added that Jewish leaders were “influential enough” to change the course of US policy. Moran inevitably apologized for those remarks, but the damage was done and he was considered to be unreliable on the issue of Israel, a view reflected in the handout which quotes Debbie Linick, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, asserting that Moran had been “lacking the nuances of understanding the peace process. It is crucial that the next representative from the 8th District be a strong supporter of Israel.”

The handout described a Jewish Community Relations Council Political Forum for the 8th District that was to be held on May 18th in Alexandria at the Council’s Early Childhood Learning Center. All prospective candidates for the 8th District were invited to participate to present their positions on various issues of interest to those attending. The access to the event was by paid tickets only, presumably to permit screening to control the make-up of the audience. The handout again quotes Linick as stating that “all area synagogues will be asked to participate” even if they were not in the voting district.

The memo suggests that someone at the forum might ask every candidate to publish his or her signed Israel Position paper, which AIPAC “requires” all candidates for office to personally sign. It also recommends that signs be placed on the street outside demanding release of the paper and notes that if there should happen to be demonstrators present they will not be allowed to block the entrance, which is behind the building on private property.

The Northern Virginia Council might well be more than usually politically active and is unlikely to have a counterpart in most congressional districts, but the handout reveals how AIPAC has an impact on all viable congressional candidates, often before they are even nominated. Once nominated, candidates go through a vetting process in which they meet with an AIPAC official and are asked to write and sign a position paper on Israel, if they have not already done so. Many of the papers are subsequently highlighted on the AIPAC website.

Few if any candidates refuse to cooperate because to do so would mean that AIPAC and its friends would find and fund an opponent and use their media access to distort the politician’s record. This type of blackballing most recently occurred in the case of Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina, who was on the receiving end of a vicious and well-funded campaign because he is an anti-war candidate strongly opposed by the pro-Israel establishment.

To be sure Americans have a constitutional right to both demand to know and challenge the views of those running for office but the important thing to note here is that the discussion is not about healthcare, immigration or government programs – it is rather about unconditional support for the policies of a foreign country. I can think of no other advocacy group in the United States that is comparable to the Israel Lobby in terms of its promotion of positions that are demonstrably not beneficial to the United States with the only possible exception being the prominent Cubans in Congress who vet candidates based on their willingness to continue to punish the regime in Havana. The Cubans, unlike the Israel Firsters, have, however, only regional impact, mostly concentrated in Florida, though it is interesting to note that they – Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Joe Garcia and Robert Menendez – are also all passionate supporters of Israel.

Americans really have little choice when it comes to Congress and Israel as anyone who refuses to cooperate with AIPAC is unlikely to find himself in the running, but there should at least be some awareness of what happens routinely to prospective candidates to insure conformity with the Lobby’s viewpoint. If unconditional loyalty to a foreign country is a sine qua non for election to congress perhaps there should be some discussion of what that is likely to mean and the promoters of such policies should be held accountable when they produce a bad result, as they did in Iraq and are promising to do vis-a-vis Iran. It is one thing to be all for Israel due to cultural or familial affinity or even as an abstraction but it is quite another to persist in that view when it does genuine harm to the United States, regarding which a case certainly can and has already been made.

June 8, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza fisherman shot by Israel 2 weeks ago succumbs to his wounds

Ma’an – June 8, 2014

GAZA CITY – A Palestinian fisherman shot by the Israeli navy two weeks ago succumbed to his wounds Sunday morning, Gaza medical authorities said.

Spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma’an that 52-year-old Imad Shukri Salim was announced dead Sunday morning.

DataFiles-Cache-TempImgs-2014-1-images_News_2014_06_08_fisherman_300_0Salim was shot in the chest by the Israeli navy two weeks ago while he was fishing off the coast in the area of al-Sudaniya in the northern Gaza Strip, al-Qidra said.

Israeli forces shot two Palestinian fishermen off the al-Sudaniya area coast in the month of May alone.

Palestinian fishermen are only being allowed to go three nautical miles from Gaza’s shore, even though an agreement previously settled on 20 nautical miles.

Israeli naval forces frequently harass Palestinian fishermen who near the three-mile limit, as well as those inside the zone.

There are 4,000 fishermen in Gaza. According to a 2011 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross 90 percent are poor, an increase of 40 percent from 2008 and a direct result of Israeli limits on the fishing industry.

June 8, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian wedding interrupted by Israeli stun grenades, 1 hurt

DataFiles-Cache-TempImgs-2014-1-images_News_2014_06_07_paramedic_300_0Ma’an – 07/06/2014

JERUSALEM – A Palestinian man was injured late Friday after being hit by an Israeli stun grenade during a wedding in East Jerusalem, a local popular committee spokesman said.

Muhammad Abu al-Hummus told Ma’an that Israeli forces unexpectedly raided the village of al-Issawiya and fired stun grenades while crowds of Palestinians were participating in a traditional wedding march.

One man was hit directly in the forehead with a stun grenade and taken to the hospital, Abu al-Hummus said.

He added that no protests were taking place as the Israeli forces entered the town.

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Release or charge hunger-striking Palestinian detainees now – UN chief to Israel

RT | June 7, 2014

Over 290 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons have been on a hunger strike since April protesting their indefinite detention. Now UN’s Ban-Ki moon demands Tel Aviv to either charge administrative inmates or release them “without delay.”

“The Secretary-General is concerned about reports regarding the deteriorating health of Palestinian administrative detainees who have been on hunger strike for over a month,” Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

The UN Secretary-General “reiterates his long-standing position that administrative detainees should be charged or released without delay,” he added.

According to the spokesman, Ban has taken note of the recent concerns issued by different human rights bodies and “has responded, reiterating the United Nations’ well known positions.”

Meanwhile, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has also expressed her concern over a legislative amendment before the Israeli Knesset to allow force-feeding of the inmates.

The legislation, if passed, “would permit force-feeding and medical treatment of prisoners on hunger strike against their will under certain conditions, in contravention of international standards,” Dujarric added.

On Thursday, members of a UN Special Committee which monitors human rights violations of the Palestinians on the occupied territories called upon Israeli authorities “to heed the demand of the hunger strikers to end the practice of arbitrary administrative detention of Palestinians,” a committee said in a statement.

“It is a desperate plea by these detainees to be afforded a very basic standard of due process: to know what they are accused of and to be able to defend themselves,” the committee said.

According to the UN body, the Israeli government has detained “a large number of Palestinians for reasons not explicitly indicated.”

“Initial administrative detention orders of six-month periods can be renewed an indefinite number of times without producing charges,” the committee said.

The first protests among the Palestinian detainees started April 24, when a group of about 100 prisoners launched a peaceful protest, the UN Special Committee said. The inmates were “inspired” by their months and years in detention in Israel without being charged with any crimes. Now the total number of hunger strikers has reached 290. At least 65 prisoners have been hospitalized as a result of the strike.

According to the UN committee, among the inmates there are currently 11 Palestinian legislators, including eight held under administrative detention.

“Given that there are more than 5,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody, we strongly appeal to the Israeli authorities to allow all Palestinian detainees, especially women and children, to be periodically seen by Palestinian doctors in order to avoid losing more lives,” the Committee said.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Israeli doctors said they wouldn’t begin force-feeding the detainees, a move that put them on a collision course with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu reportedly asked the authorities to speed up the bill’s reading, saying that he is confident the force-feeding will eventually be carried out.

The Israeli PM is now citing controversial US policy of force-feeding of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a move that prompted long hunger-strikes among the inmates. The Guantanamo policy has drawn criticism from the United Nations human rights office, which said it constitutes torture and is thus a violation of international law.

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Ah Palestine: a non-existing land without people for a non-existing people

By Michael Congress | Politics, Music and Irony | June 4, 2014

The Israeli Supreme court has recently ruled that there is no such thing as an “Israeli” recognized by the legal system of the State of Israel. You can be classified as a Jew, an Arab, a Druze, a foreign visitor, but nobody is “Israeli.” Just a short while ago the Knesset created a new status, “Christian.” So now a Palestinian Christian, who had previously been classified as merely an “Arab,” can now not be an Arab but a Christian and be accorded some rights that are currently denied to regular Palestinians, who are classified as Arabs. Israel has never wanted to give any credence to the fact that there ever was a place called Palestine that had people in it.

But now it has definitely been ruled that there is no common ground, no catch-all status of “Israeli.” Therefore, Israeli citizenship is an empty category. It does not resemble any idea of “citizenship” that we as citizens of the USA, or Canadian, or Mexican citizens can recognize. In Israel citizenship is meaningless and “Nationality” is everything (if you can get past the idea that a religion is also a nationality…I wonder if someone presenting a Unitarian Church passport would get through customs.)

This all makes sense if you are running a caste system in which the Nationality/Religion “Jewish” gets full rights and others get less, or no rights at all. This is what Israel is. It is not a modern Western style democracy that just happens to have a “discrimination” problem, or to have by accident acquired extra territory with some undesirable people on it.

In the news media when someone quotes an “Israeli” source, or a government representative they always mean “Jewish,” but they never say “a Jewish government source has said…” But according to the Supreme Court of the State of Israel (I don’t want to say “Jewish Supreme Court”) Israelis don’t exist. The leaders of the State of Israel are always thumping their chests proclaiming “we are the Jews!” “We are the only Jewish state in the world and we represent all the Jews of the world.”

But if some critic were to say, ” I don’t like what the Jews are doing in the West Bank.” The reaction would be, “Anti-Semite!!! Jew hater.” Well…maybe this isn’t an important point. After all, whenever someone says, “I don’t like what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank,” the response is “Anti-Semite! Jew hater!”

Many of us who support human rights for Palestinians have encountered retorts from defenders of Israeli Apartheid who say, “there are no Palestinians, they don’t exist.” This is a popular line. A lot of people who think they are clever, worldly and liberal like to say this (like ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg). Think about it though. There are over 5 million Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (about the same as the number of Jews living there). they are Arabs (native speakers of Arabic) whose ancestors have lived in a place known as Palestine at least since the 5th century BC (as attested to by Herodotus, who started the genre of History writing) and certainly longer than that.

For the Zionists to deny their nationality is to deny their right to exist..or to exist within the lands that the Jews of Israel claim as their exclusive property. This is an eliminationist, ethnic cleansing, rabid xenophobic point of view. There is no left, right or center here, just push them out. Get rid of them.

So now Israelis don’t exist and Palestinians don’t exist. Leaders of the state of Israel are always wailing about an “existential threat” to Israel presented by… everyone and everything. BDS, halting settlement construction, protest marches, African refugees (officially called “infiltrators”), you name it.

But how can there be an existential threat to non-existing Israelis from Palestinians who also don’t exist? Jean Paul Sartre seemed to corner the nothingness market with his tome “Being and Nothingness.” But now he’s been outdone.

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

Omar – Film Review by Gilad Atzmon

The Tragedy of Omar

by Gilad Atzmon | June 6, 2014

One of the most important Palestinian feature films ever, Omar, is the deepest expose of the diabolical nature of the Israeli occupation and the inhuman situation imposed on Palestinians by the Jewish State. It also throws light on the tragic and depressing Palestinian struggle against a sophisticated, demonic enemy — an on-going battle that so far has led nowhere.

In his latest film, Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad sets Omar (Adam Bakri), a young freedom fighter in an impossible, yet common, Palestinian dilemma, caught in a devastating triangle between his patriotic commitment, romance and the omnipresent Jewish State – a brutal, Orwellian, Big Brother that sees everything, knows everything, sets people against each other and controls everything through a network of collaborators even within the resistance.

Once captured by the IDF and being subject to some horrendous physical and mental torture by Israeli intelligence, Omar is set into a hellish scenario. He eventually manages to buy the Israeli’s trust, he lets them believe that he is willing to cooperate. At that moment Omar pretty much seals his fate. He is destined to lose everything.

Though we, comfortable in our cinema seats, know that he never compromised his commitment to his people, one by one, the Palestinians around him, led to believe he is a traitor, they turn their backs on him. Losing the love of his life to his friend — clearly a collaborator — he is ostracised by fellow warriors and their families. Omar, a Palestinian patriot, becomes a pawn in an evil Israeli game. As his situation deteriorates and his tragedy unfolds in front of our eyes, he remains aware of it all, and we, who witness this emerging tragedy, also can see no way out.

Agent Rami (Waleed Zuaiter), the veritable ‘good cop’ is the Israeli intelligence operator who recruits Omar. He appears to be humane, he never uses physical pressure, he also has his own family matters to handle, wife, kid etc’. But all those ‘humane’ symptoms are there to cover a deeply sinister and hideous character. Rami is in fact a cold blood Israeli monster who shatters the lives of others in a mass scale. He systematically makes empathy and human affection into a highly functional instruments of total abuse.

One hardly need to say that Rami, like Omar, is a symbol of his people and indeed, there is a clear cultural and ideological continuum between Rami, Shimon Peres and the entire Jewish Left. I refer here to the deceitful nature embedded in contemporary Jewish political culture, that intention to present empathy and humanism only to conceal a sinister, self-centric agenda that cares only for the members of the tribe.

At the start of this film we meet a young, handsome and joyful, Palestinian patriot who leaps over the gigantic Israeli Wall and who, against all odds, lays claim to his land. Ninety minutes later, the same man is a defeated soul. Physically and mentally tortured, Omar simply can no longer climb the wall and bridge the divide imposed on his people by the Jewish State.

By the end of the film, Omar, like Palestine itself, is a tormented and defeated soul. For him, there is no hope but martyrdom.

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu regime sets up company to encourage Jewish Europeans, especially Ukrainians, to immigrate to Israel

MEMO | June 6, 2014

The Israeli government and the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption are implementing a plan to encourage European Jews, especially from Ukraine, to immigrate to Israel under the pretext of the growing anti-Semitism in Europe. Yedioth Ahronoth news reported on Friday that the Israeli government has allocated 100 million new Israeli shekels (£17.2 million) to this plan. The plan also includes granting 15,000 new Israeli shekels (£2,577) to every Jewish family that flees these areas.

The newspaper added that the Israeli government decided to establish an independent company in order to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel from all over the world. In the past, The Jewish Agency for Israel dealt with the matters of Jewish immigration to Israel, but the new company will not have the same restrictions applied to state companies and it will be able to operate freely in European countries.

This company will also include representatives from Zionist organisations such as Keren Kayemet (The Jewish National Fund), the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Histadrut, and will work in accordance with the regulations of a specialised committee that will be formed and will be presided over by the head of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

The newspaper also stressed that the new company “will market the plan in European countries in order to create a large increase in the number of Jewish immigrants to Israel.” According to the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption date, the number of immigrants from Ukraine to Israel doubled this year in comparison to the same period last year. This year 1,541 immigrants arrived in Israel compared to 697 immigrants during the first half of last year, Israel attributes this increase to the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine after its division.

The Israeli government recently approved the “France First” plan to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel from France. Yedioth Ahronoth stated that this plan led to the increase in the number of immigrants from France to Israel by 192 per cent compared to last year.

An official from the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption acknowledged the sensitivity of encouraging Jews in European countries to immigrate to Israel because they are citizens of a foreign country. He also said that the activity of the Zionist organisations in this context “is carried out in a quiet manner without drawing any attention”.

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

No Jews allowed

International Solidarity Movement | June 5, 2014

Hebron, Occupied Palestine – My plan for the morning was pretty simple, I wanted to enter the souq (market) and buy some bread for breakfast, and then walk home. That was it. As I made my way towards the souq entrance I was stopped by two Israeli border police officers and asked for my religion. This is not an unusual experience in this city, the military are a common sight and as well as the regular checkpoints, they can and often do stop you at any time, demanding your identification, asking your religion, and any other questions they desire to ask.

I am neither ashamed nor proud of my religion. It is part of who I am in the same way my hair colour is a part of me. It is also a question I have been asked before and, as in the past, I told the truth.

“I’m Jewish,” I said.

The two border police officers spoke to each other in Hebrew, a language I have very little understanding of.

“Where are you going?” They asked.

“The souq,” I said. “I just want to go to the market.”

“No, you can’t go in. No Jews allowed.”

I wasn’t completely shocked, this has also been something stated to me before.

“Come on, I’ve been in there a thousand times, is it illegal for me to enter?”

“You can’t go in, you’re Jewish, it’s not allowed, it’s dangerous.”

I wanted to laugh, I may well have done. “It’s not dangerous, I have many friends in there, just let me go.”

This continued on for a few more minutes, the blood heating in my face as I tried to argue my case to no avail. The real irony was instead of walking through the market to go home, I was forced to walk Shuhada street, a perfect example of the apartheid that exists within this military occupation, a street where Palestinians have been barred from walking since the year 2000, where many people lost their homes and livelihoods after they were forced to leave and never return. Only the Israeli military, settlers, and internationals are allowed to walk Shuhada Street, it is often christened “Ghost Town” by the Palestinians, and indeed the sight of so many closed shops and houses, is haunting. It is also a street where I have been assaulted twice by settlers, so the idea that this was a safer alternative for me than the market, is laughable.

I have been fortunate enough to live in Palestine for several months, mainly living in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron). Al-Khalil is a city with many problems, mostly due to the illegal settlement in the heart of the city [all settlements in occupied territory are illegal under international law], and the huge Israeli military presence there to enable the settlers.

The Israeli military commits terrible crimes against the Palestinian people. I have seen them arresting and detaining adults and children for no reason, physically and verbally harassing the people of the city, using their military weapons against adults, youths and children, as well as a hundred and one other injustices that impact the daily lives of Palestinians in al-Khalil.

The settlers in al-Khalil are above the law. They attack Palestinians and steal their land and property on a regular basis. The Israeli military not only does nothing to stop this, but in many cases they condone and encourage it. I have seen settler youth throwing stones at Palestinian homes, while Israeli soldiers watched on. When we asked the soldiers to do something to stop this, they replied they would do nothing, as they are “children”. However Israeli soldiers have no qualms in using violence against Palestinian children. I have come to al-Khalil as a solidarity activist; one of the activities I participate in almost daily is ‘school checkpoint watch’. This is where I would assist in monitoring a specific checkpoint the children of the city are forced to go through on their way to school. I have witnessed Israeli soldiers harassing and searching children as they go through the checkpoint, firing tear gas and stun grenades at them and into their schools, and detaining children, some as young as six-years-old.

After the two border police officers denied me entry into the market in the morning, I tried again several hours later. The result was the same. I was angry, and I was upset, and while I am in Palestine as a solidarity activist, all I wanted to do was to go through the souq and visit one of my friends.

However, I have no intention of writing that I now “understand” what the Palestinians experience due to the military occupation, and the complete control that exists over their freedom of movement. My experience today was frustrating, and also unfair, but it is nothing compared to what the Palestinian people experience on a regular basis.

Due to the colour of my skin, and my nationality, I am incredibly aware of the privilege I have in Palestine, and all over the world. The very fact that I am able to enter Palestine is a huge privilege within itself; so many Palestinians in the diaspora were forced away from their homeland and have never seen it again. The fact that, if I so wish, I can travel to Yaffa, and one of my closest friends, a Palestinian woman whose family is originally from the city, can never see her home.

I have never been denied entry to any area due to my religion by Palestinians, or any other time in my life. It is telling that the first time this happens is by the Israeli military, under the façade of my ‘safety’. Unless Israeli soldiers or settlers enter, which they frequently do, the most dangerous thing that could happen to me in the souq is that I could overdose on tea, forced on me by my friends.

June 5, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Pope’s unbalanced neutrality in Holy Land

By Nicola Nasser | Middle East Eye | June 4, 2014

Pope Francis’ “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land last week proved to be an unbalanced impossible mission. The pontiff failed to strike a balance of neutrality between contradictory and irreconcilable binaries like divinity and earth, religion and politics, justice and injustice and military occupation and peace.

Such neutrality is viewed by the laity of Christian believers, let alone Muslim ones, in the Holy Land as religiously, morally and politically unacceptable.

The 77-year old head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics “is stepping into a religious and political minefield,” Naim Ateek, the Anglican priest who founded the Palestinian liberation theology movement and runs the Sabeel Ecumenical Center in Jerusalem and Nazareth, was quoted as saying by Time on last May 24, the first day of the pope’s “pilgrimage.”

Ironically, the symbolic moral and spiritual power of the Holy See was down to earth in Pope Francis’ subservient adaptation to the current realpolitik of the Holy Land in what the Catholic Online on May 26 described as “faith diplomacy.”

The pontiff’s message to the Palestinian people during his three-day “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land boils down to an endorsement of the Israeli and U.S. message to them, i.e.: “The only route to peace” is to negotiate with the Israeli occupying power, refrain from unilateral actions and “violent” resistance and recognize Israel as a fait accompli.

The UK-based Jordanian-Palestinian journalist Lamis Andoni, a Christian herself, wrote on May 27: “We don’t need the Vatican blessing of negotiations … Whoever sees occupation and remains neutral has no justice in his vision.”

The Vatican and the pope himself had insisted that his visit to the birthplace of the three monotheistic “Abrahamic faiths” of Islam, Christianity and Judaism was “purely spiritual,” “strictly religious,” a “pilgrimage for prayer” and “absolutely not political.”

But the Vatican expert John Allen, writing in the Boston Globe a week ahead of the pope’s visit, had expected it to be a “political high-wire act,” and that’s what it truly was, because “religion and politics cannot be separated in the Holy Land,” according to Yolande Knell on BBC online on May 25.

Pope Francis would have performed much better had he adhered “strictly,” “purely” and “absolutely” to making his trip a “pilgrimage for prayer” and one that is committed to Christian unity and to helping indigenous Christians survive the highly volatile and violent regional environment.

Instead he had drowned his spiritual role in a minefield of symbolic political semantics and semiotics.

The pope finished his “pilgrimage,” which was announced as a religious one but turned instead into a political pilgrimage, with a call for peace.

However, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein, while welcoming the pontiff inside Islam’s third holiest site of Al-Aqsa Mosque on May 26, said: “Peace in this land will not happen until the end of the [Israeli military] occupation.”

Palestinian-American Daoud Kuttab on May 25 wrote in a controversial column that the pope “exceeded expectations for Palestinians.”

He flew directly from Jordan to Bethlehem in Palestine without passing through any Israeli entry procedures, implicitly and symbolically recognizing Palestinian sovereignty.

He addressed the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as the head of the “State of Palestine,” announced that there must be “recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign homeland and their right to live with dignity and with freedom of movement” and met with Palestinian children whose parents were refugees whom Israelis displaced from their homes in 1948.

And in an undeniable expression of solidarity with the Palestinians, he made an unplanned stop to pray at Israel’s apartheid wall of segregation in Bethlehem, because, as he said, “the time has come to put an end to this situation which has become increasingly unacceptable.”

However, the word “occupation” was missing in more than thirteen of his speeches during his “pilgrimage” as was any reference to the world’s “largest open-air prison” in Gaza Strip or to Dahiyat a-Salam (literally: Neighborhood of Peace) and five other neighbourhoods in eastern Jerusalem, including the Shu’fat Refugee Camp, where some eighty thousand Palestinians have been cut off from the city services, including water, since March 2014 and isolated from Jerusalem by Israel’s segregation wall. His itinerary did not include the Galilee and Nazareth where most Palestinian Christians are located.

Eight papal messages

However, within less than twenty four hours the pontiff was to offset his positive overtures to Palestinians and his call for a “just solution” and a “stable peace based on justice” for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with eight messages to them.

The pontiff’s arrival in the Palestinian Holy Land came three days before Israel’s celebration of its 47th anniversary of its military occupation and annexation of the Christian and Muslim holy sites in the Arab east Jerusalem and ten days after the Palestinian commemoration of the 66th anniversary of their Nakba on the creation of Israel in 1948 on the ruins of more than 500 towns and villages from which the Zionist paratroops ethnically cleansed forcefully more than 800,000 Arab Muslim and Christian native Palestinians.

The pope had nothing to say or do on both occasions to alleviate the ensuing plight of the Palestinians except prayers, because “the concrete measures for peace must come from negotiations … It is the only route to peace,” according to the pope aboard his flight back to Rome.

That was exactly the same futile message the Israeli occupying power and its U.S. strategic ally have been sending to Palestinians for sixty six years, but especially since 1967: Palestinians should be held hostages to exclusively bilateral negotiations with their occupying power. This was the pope’s first message to Palestinians.

For this purpose, the pope invited Palestinian and Israeli presidents, Abbas and Shimon Peres, to pray for peace at “my home in the Vatican as a place for this encounter of prayer” on June 8. The pope’s spokesman, Federico Lombardi, told the BBC it was “a papal peace initiative.” This was his second message.

His third message to Palestinians was to “refrain from initiatives and actions which contradict the stated desire to reach a true agreement” with Israel, i.e. to refrain from unilateral actions, which is again another Israeli and U.S. precondition which both allies do not deem as deserving Israeli reciprocity.

By laying a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the atheist founder of Zionism who nonetheless believed in God’s promise of the land to His Jewish “chosen people,” the pope legitimized Herzl’s colonial settlement project in Palestine. This was his fourth message: Israel is a fait accompli recognized by the Vatican and blessed by the papacy and Palestinians have to adapt accordingly. The Washington Post on May 23 went further. “Some are interpreting” the pope’s act “as the pontiff’s tacit recognition of the country’s Jewish character.”

The pope sent his fifth message to Palestinians when he addressed young Palestinian refugees from the Dehiyshe Refugee Camp in Bethlehem: “Don’t ever allow the past to determine your life, always look forward.” He was repeating the Israeli and U.S. call on Palestinian refugees to forget their Nakba and look forward from their refugee camps for an unknown future in exile and diaspora.

On the same occasion he sent his sixth message: “Violence cannot be defeated by violence; violence can only be defeated with peace,” the pope advised the young Palestinian refugees. This is again the Israeli and U.S. message to them, which after more than two decades of Palestinian commitment produced neither peace nor justice for them.

The pope prayed at the Holocaust memorial, the western al-Buraq Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which Israelis call “The Wailing Wall,” the memorial of the Israeli victims of Palestinian resistance, laid a wreath at Herzel’s grave, visited Israeli president at his residence where he “vowed to pray for the institutions of the State of Israel,” which are responsible for the Palestinian Nakba, and received Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Notre Dame complex. The pontiff was in fact blessing and granting the Vatican legitimacy to all the Israeli symbolic casus belli claims to the land, which justify the Palestinian Nakba. This was his seventh message.

All those events took place in Jerusalem, which Israel annexed as the “eternal” capital of the Hebrew state and the “Jewish people.” Reuven Berko, writing in Yisrael Hayom, said that the Pope’s meetings with Peres and Netanyahu were “de facto expressions of the Vatican’s recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.”

The pope’s eighth message to Palestinians was on the future of Jerusalem: “From the negotiations perhaps it will emerge that it will be the capital of one State or another … I do not consider myself competent to say that we should do one thing or another.”

Normalization with Israel

The “greatest importance” of Pope Francis’ visit “may lie in the fact that it reflects the normalization of relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel,” head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, wrote on May 23.

The Second Vatican Council early in the sixties of the last century rejected the collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ’s death. Since then the Vatican’s “normalization” of relations with the Jews and Israel has been accumulating.

Rabbi David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, was quoted as saying by the USA Today on May 26: There “has been a revolution in the Christian world.”

At Ben-Gurion airport on May 25, Pope Francis reiterated his predecessor Benedict’s call for “the right of existence for the [still borderless] State of Israel to be recognized universally,” but was wise enough not to reiterate his “thanks to God” because “the Jews returned to the lands of their ancestors.”

To emphasise interfaith coexistence he broke the precedent of including a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim sheikh in his official delegation. “It’s highly symbolic,” said Rev. Thomas Rosica, a consultant to the Vatican press office.

By laying a wreath of white and yellow flowers, the colours of the Vatican, on the Herzl’s grave, the pope broke another historic precedent. It was an unbalanced act, 110 years after Pope Pius X met Herzl and rejected the idea of a Jewish state.

The pontiff’s “pilgrimage” could not dispel the historical fact that lies deep in the regional Arab memory that papacy is “still linked to the Crusades of the 11th through 13th centuries” when the successive popes’ only link to the Holy Land was a military one, according to the international editor of NPR.org, Greg Myre, on this May 24.

Of course this does not apply to Christianity. The indigenous oriental churches’ link to the land has never been interrupted while the Catholic Church was cut off from the region since the end of the Crusades until it came back with the European colonial domination since the nineteenth century.

No pope ever travelled to Jerusalem until Paul VI spent one day in the city, on January 4, 1964, when the holy sites were under the rule of the Arab Jordanians. John Paul visited thirty six years later and established a new papal tradition that has been followed by Pope Benedict, who visited in 2009, and now Pope Francis.

It doesn’t bode well with the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular that the new papal tradition is building on the background of recognizing Israel, which is an occupying power and still without constitutional demarcated borders, as a fait accompli that the Palestinian people should recognize as well.

~

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An edited version of this article was first published by the Middle East Eye. nassernicola@ymail.com

June 5, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Begins Arrest Campaign Against Popular Resistance Activists

mahmoud_zwahre_340_220

By Chris Carlson | International Middle East Media Center | June 5, 2014

Yesterday, at 4:30 am, Popular Resistance activist Mahmoud Zwahre was again arrested by the Israeli army, at his house in Al Ma’asara, just southwest of Bethlehem.

An attempt to arrest Zwahre was made previously during the weekly Friday protest in the village. This week, on Wednesday, a large group of Israeli soldiers raided Zwahre’s home, just before dawn.

Mahmoud Zwahre, according to the Palestinian News Network (PNN), is an activist and coordinator for the Popular Committee Against the Wall and the Settlements in Al Ma’asara. Soldiers surrounded the Zwahre residence and declared it a closed military zone, as they proceeded to tear through the contents of the house, terrorizing the children and abusing Mahmoud in front of his family.

He was arrested, blindfolded, and taken to an unknown destination — essentially, and by all rights, amounting to a kidnapping.

(Al Ma’asara is a small Palestinian village located in Area B of the central occupied West Bank. Though Area B is officially recognized to be under joint Israeli-Palestinian security control, the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has yet to be granted legitimacy by the international community.)

Munther Amira, director of the board of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee Against the Wall and the Settlements (PSCC) in the Palestinian territories, explained in an interview with the PNN that the Israeli occupation increasingly targets activists of Popular Resistance and their activities:

The activities of Popular Resistance are peaceful and designed to highlight the suffering of the Palestinian people through the Israeli occupation practices of racism and violation of international law. Nevertheless, the PSCC has documented the rough and violent reactions by Israeli soldiers against the protests and marches organized by the Popular Struggle Committees in the various provinces of the country.

The committee denounces the arrest of its coordinator Mahmoud Zwahre, and calls for his release.

June 5, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli restrictions ‘preventing Gaza unity government meeting’

Ma’an – 04/06/2014

BETHLEHEM – Ministers of the new Palestinian unity government are planning a cabinet meeting in the Gaza Strip, but Israel continues to deny them permits to travel, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

Ehab Bseiso told Ma’an that the ministers want to meet in Gaza to discuss the situation in the blockaded enclave, but that Israel has revoked the VIP status of Palestinian government members.

Meanwhile, four members of the new unity government still have not been officially sworn into office, given that Israel rejected their requests to travel to Ramallah for Monday’s inauguration ceremony, Bseiso said.

He said the government is trying to find a legal way for Gaza ministers to be sworn in despite Israeli restrictions.

The four Gaza-based ministers are Mamoon Abu Shahla as minister of labor, Haifa al-Agha as minister of women’s affairs, Mufeed al-Hasayna as minister of housing and public works, and Salim al-Saqqa as minister of justice.

The four ministers partook in the government’s first official meeting on Tuesday via video conference call.

Though Israeli officials were furious over the creation of a unified West Bank-Gaza government, the US, the UN, and the EU expressed support for the new Palestinian government as long as it respected previous agreements, was committed to nonviolence, and recognized Israel.

Hamas ceded power over Gaza to the new government on Monday after signing a historic reconciliation deal with the Fatah-led PLO in April.

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

Tax Dollars, Detroit and Israel

By Robert Fantina | CounterPunch | June 4, 2014

As Detroit, Michigan grapples with bankruptcy, requiring at least $1 billion in aid, it is probably not alone. “More U.S. cities could be heading towards bankruptcy”, said Richard Ravitch, a former Lieutenant-Governor of New York, who was instrumental in helping New York City navigate through its financial woes in the 1970s.

So with Detroit, once the world leader in automobile manufacturing, now on its deathbed, and other major U.S. cities selling off their buildings to pay current expenses, it may be informative to look at how the Federal government is spending U.S tax dollars.

Half a planet away is the glittering city of Tel Aviv. One wonders why that city can be so successful, while U.S. cities are dying. Could it be the $9 million dollars the U.S. gives to Israel, every single day of the year, more in foreign aid than the United States give to all other countries combined?

One might reasonably ask what Detroit could do with $9 million dollars a day. That city is trying to cobble together $1 billion to stay afloat this year; Israel is getting more three times that much from U.S. taxpayers, every year.

‘But’, the august, so-called representatives of the U.S. citizenry will proclaim, ‘Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, a major ally of the U.S., and therefore must be supported’. Really? One wonders why this ally not only refuses to cooperate with the U.S.’s hapless and insincere efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, but actually spits in the face of the U.S., as it accepts $9 million a day. When the joke of peace talks is announced, with the U.S. saying neither side should do anything to jeopardize them, Israel announces more illegal settlements. When the United Nations proposes condemning increased settlement-building, which the U.S. has stated it believes to be in violation of international law, Israel knows it can rely on the U.S. to veto any such resolution. When the U.S. hypocritically decries the human rights abuses so prevalent around the world, Israel knows that it is exempt from any such condemnation, if it only brutally abuses Palestinians.

Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. Looking at one incident from the administration of President Ronald Reagan indicates Israel’s sure knowledge that it can do as it pleases, with no repercussions from the U.S.

In 1988, Mr. Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, crafted a plan that he hoped would resolve some ongoing, underlying issues between Palestine and Israel. His three point plan was as follows:

 1) The convening of an international conference;

2) A six-month negotiating period that would bring about an interim phase for Palestinian self-determination for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and

3) A date of December, 1988 for the start of talks between Israel and Palestine for the final resolution of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir immediately rejected this plan, claiming, incredibly, that it did nothing to forward the cause of peace. In response, the U.S. issued a new memorandum, emphasizing economic and security agreements with Israel, and accelerating the delivery of seventy-five F-16 fighter jets. This, ostensibly, was to encourage Israel to accept the peace plan proposals. Yet Israel did not yield.  An Israeli journalist commented that the message received was: “One may say no to America and still get a bonus.” And thus it has been for generations.

The reason for this is hardly a mystery. The Israeli lobby, the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), funnels millions of dollars into the election and re-election campaigns of candidates and elected officials who are willing to jump as high as AIPAC demands. And it seems there is no height to which these worthies will not jump for the almighty dollar. In return, they send a fortune to Israel every year, defend its horrific human rights abuses, and ignore international laws, laws the U.S. has signed on to. And when Palestinians are occasionally able to gather supplies sufficient to send an ineffective rocket into Israel, the U.S. condones and finances the carpet-bombing of the beleaguered Gaza Strip.

Never mind that much of Detroit looks like it has annoyed Israel, and been victim of its bombs. Ignore the spiraling, out-of-control crime rate, the poverty, poor educational standards, failing infrastructure and despair that are so much a part of that once great city. Rather, fawn over Israel, send it vast amounts of money that could be going to assist the taxpayers who provide it, and accept those checks into campaign coffers from grateful Zionists.

The Palestinians have just sworn in a new unity government (why the media insists on saying that Hamas ‘seized control’ of the Gaza Strip in 2006, when it was democratically elected, is a mystery to this writer), and Israel is in panic mode. There now exists the possibility that Palestine will petition the International Criminal Court for redress from Israel’s many horrific crimes. Israel, with complete U.S. support, has successfully resisted every effort by the international community to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. The time may be approaching when it can hide no longer.

And what of that? As Israel becomes increasingly isolated in the world community, due at least partly to the success of the ‘Boycott, Divest and Sanction’ (BDS) campaign, including commercial, academic and entertainment boycotts, will not the U.S. always be there to come to the financial rescue? As more and more U.S. cities decay, as the educational level of U.S. schools falls further and further behind other industrialized nations, leaving a citizenry ill-prepared to work in the global economy, as the number of those living in poverty grows, what is all that, when AIPAC pulls the puppets’ strings?

A generation ago, when the U.S. first began moon exploration, with the goal of landing a person on the moon, some critics said that the vast amounts of money that that would cost could be better used on this planet. Today, as the U.S. bows and scrapes at the unholy altar of AIPAC, mightn’t the same argument be used? When U.S. citizens are in deep poverty, living in unsafe, decaying cities, is it a stretch of the imagination to think that U.S. tax dollars should go first to assisting them?

There remain, in isolated pockets of the U.S., people who believe that the United States is a democracy, with voters electing people to represent them, who will act in their best interests. When the tax burden falls mainly on the dwindling middle class, and the taxes they pay go not to assist the communities in which they live, but to support and uphold a barbaric apartheid regime, the time for the putting to bed of that myth has long since passed.

Detroit and countless other U.S. cities will continue to struggle to survive, as tax revenues are sent to a nation that holds the U.S. in complete contempt. But politicians will continue to have unlimited funds for their election campaigns, so business will remain as usual.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Dill Press).

 

June 4, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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