There has been a lot of negative media attention in the last few months on Sodastream, an Israeli fizzy drinks company with a factory in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mishor Adumim. A partnership between Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson ended recently after an international campaign put pressure on the charity to end its relationship with Johansson because she was undertaking ongoing work for Sodastream.
However, a high profile US public relations (PR) firm, which boasts of its “ethical business practices”, is providing services to both Sodastream and Oxfam America. Fenton Communications states on its site that “We do not take on clients that we do not believe in ourselves” and claims that it works “for companies and foundations advocating social change”. Fenton’s corporate social responsibility rhetoric and greenwash doesn’t bear more than a few minutes of scrutiny. The PR firm has a client list which includes large multinationals such as General Mills and Unilever. General Mills jointly own the General Mills (Pillsbury) plant in the Atarot settlement Industrial zone, while Unilever only pulled out of the Barkan settlement industrial zone after years of pressure from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Both companies are also responsible for selling, marketing and lobbying hard for processed foods globally, which are damaging to people’s health. One of Fenton’s other clients is Oxfam America.
In response to the public campaign about Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam stated: “While Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors, Ms. Johansson’s role promoting the company SodaStream is incompatible with her role as an Oxfam Global Ambassador… Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.” Why then does Oxfam America find it acceptable to work with a PR firm that includes Sodastream on its client list?
It is not surprising that Sodastream feels the need for a PR firm. The company sells consumer products, marketing them as ‘green’. It relies on maintaining a positive public image. The international boycott campaign against the company has been growing apace and is taking its toll. Sodastream has reported a loss in the last three quarters and its share price is suffering.
Why not contact Oxfam encouraging them not to work with a PR firm doing business with a company working in Israel’s settlements:
RAMALLAH – Letters of accession for 15 international multilateral treaties and conventions were handed to the relevant parties on Wednesday after being signed by President Mahmoud Abbas a day earlier, Palestinian officials said.
“I presented the letters signed by Abbas this morning to UN special envoy Robert Serry, as well as to the representatives of the Netherlands and Switzerland,” Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said.
He said the Palestinians had begun the “technical process” required to obtain membership of some 15 international conventions and covenants, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.
“This action does not detract from the importance of negotiations. We are still committed to these talks,” he said.
In July, the PLO agreed to postpone accession to international bodies in exchange for the release of 104 Palestinians prisoners jailed before the Oslo Accords.
“Since Israel failed to release the last group of prisoners, the State of Palestine is no longer obliged to postpone its rights to accede to multilateral treaties and conventions,” the PLO said in a statement Wednesday.
“Despite the escalation of oppressive Israeli policies such as the killing of Palestinian civilians, settlement construction, raids on vulnerable communities, arbitrary arrests and detentions, home demolitions and the removal of residency rights, we remained committed to the negotiations process and supported US efforts,” it added.
Earlier, Israeli Tourism Minster Uzi Landau warned of punitive action if the PLO pursued efforts to join UN agencies and threatened that Israel could annex territory in the occupied West Bank in response.
Israel could also hurt the Palestinians economically by acting “to block financial aid to them,” the minister added.
Abbas signed letters of accession for the following treaties and conventions:
1. The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
2. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
3. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict
5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
6. The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
7. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
8. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
9. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
10. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
11. The United Nations Convention against Corruption
12. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
13. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
14. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
15. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Hope for continued peace efforts
Meanwhile, a senior official said Wednesday that the PLO wants US efforts to salvage the peace process to continue.
“We hope (US Secretary of State John) Kerry’s efforts will be renewed in the coming days,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, told reporters in Ramallah.
“Kerry knows the reality. We don’t want these efforts to finish.”
Abbas’ announcement that the PLO had taken steps to join UN agencies angered Israel and prompted Kerry to cancel a trip to Ramallah on Wednesday.
The announcement was a blow to Kerry’s frenetic efforts to resolve a dispute over Palestinian prisoners and find a way to extend the fragile peace talks beyond a looming April 29 deadline.
Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian move was “a response to Israel’s flagrant violation of the agreement” under which it would release prisoners if the Palestinians refrained from seeking further UN recognition.
“The government of Israel did not release the prisoners, without any reason or even any excuse for not doing so,” Abed Rabbo said.
The senior Palestinian official suggested that they would not be quitting talks before the deadline.
“The Palestinian leadership respects its commitments and wants the political process to continue, but we want a real political process, without tricks,” he said.
“We will continue our efforts with the US administration, and will do everything we can to remove all obstacles.”
The negotiations have faltered over several issues, notably Israel’s settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian territory, with the PLO demanding a freeze on settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.
An Israeli minister threatened on Wednesday to annex further territory in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for renewed Palestinian action to join United Nations agencies and international treaties.
“If they are now threatening (to go to UN institutions), they must know something simple: they will pay a heavy price,” Tourism Minister Uzi Landau told public radio.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said he had begun steps to join several UN agencies, abandoning a pledge to freeze such action for the duration of peace talks – which end in just four weeks.
Abbas announced a request to join “15 UN agencies and international treaties.”
“The demands (for membership) will be sent immediately” to the relevant agencies, he said.
The documents Abbas signed, officials said, included the Geneva Conventions – the key text of international law on the conduct of war and occupation.
Palestinians hope it will give them a stronger basis to appeal to the International Criminal Court and eventually lodge formal complaints against Israel for its continued occupation of lands seized in the 1967 war that they want for their state.
“This is not a move against America, or any other party – it is our right, and we agreed to suspend it for nine months,” Abbas said of the decision.
Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s ruling party, welcomed the move by Abbas,
The Palestinians had repeatedly warned that they could resume their action through international courts and the UN over Israel’s settlement expansion on occupied territory in the West Bank and in annexed east Jerusalem.
“One of the possible measures will be Israel applying sovereignty over areas which will clearly be part of the State of Israel in any future solution,” said Landau, a member of the hardline Yisrael Beitenu faction.
Landau’s remarks were referring to areas of the West Bank populated by Jewish settlers which Israel hopes to retain in any future peace deal.
Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.
An Israeli government official, who would not be named, said Abbas’s announcement had thrown everything up in the air.
“Is this Israel’s partner? Is this a partner for peace?” he asked.
“Everything has changed now, is there even a deal now? We don’t know,” he said, referring to the proposal which was being discussed with Kerry.
Israel could also hurt the Palestinians economically by acting “to block financial aid to them,” the minister added.
Abbas made his announcement just hours after Israel reissued tenders for hundreds of settler homes in east Jerusalem, as Washington was working around the clock to resolve a major dispute over Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli NGO Ir Amim described the tenders as “a poke in the eye of both the Palestinians and the Americans,” army radio said.
And Hagit Ofran, from Israeli’s Peace Now NGO, accused the housing ministry of “trying to forcefully undermine the peace process… and John Kerry’s efforts to promote it.”
Israel refused to free a fourth and final group of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, which would have completed an agreement that had brought the sides back to the table.
On Monday, the Palestinian Authority gave Kerry a 24-hour deadline to come up with a solution to the prisoner row, warning that failure to do so would see them turning to UN bodies to press their claims for statehood.
“America must compel Israel now to follow through on its agreement to release the fourth group of prisoners. We will be watching these efforts and hope they don’t fail,” Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said.
“But our position is clear: we want the release of the fourth group according to the agreement, and without that we won’t accept any other obligations or conditions,” he said.
The standoff came soon after US Secretary of State John Kerry left Israel on Tuesday after a lightning visit.
He had been due to fly back to the region on Wednesday for talks in Ramallah with Abbas but he cancelled his visit following the Palestinian leader’s announcement, while attempting to remain optimistic.
“It is completely premature tonight to draw… any final judgement about today’s events and where things are,” he said in Brussels.
“My team is on the ground meeting with the parties even tonight,” he said. “We urge both parties to show restraint.”
US efforts have been focused recently on getting the parties to agree an extension to the end of the year.
A US proposal to continue talks was to include a limited “freeze” on settlement construction, with Israel adopting “a policy of restraint with (West Bank) government tenders” but would not include annexed east Jerusalem.
Sources close to the negotiations had said Washington was also mulling a proposal to free Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in Washington in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for spying on America on Israel’s behalf.
But White House Jay Carney said before the Tuesday afternoon developments that President Barack Obama had not made any decision on Pollard.
Separately, a spokesman for the US Justice Department said Pollard had waived his right to attend a meeting of a parole board that could have re-examined his ongoing detention.
(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
The Palestinian leadership is demanding that Israel freezes its settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories as a condition for extending the negotiations.
Maan News Agency quoted on Tuesday the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, as saying that the Palestinian leadership has demanded for Israel to freeze its settlement activities, including government tenders to construct settlements, in order to extend the negotiations. The leadership has also decided to seek recognition for the State of Palestine from United Nations organisations if Israel does not release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners as previously agreed.
Barghouti, who attended the Palestinian leadership meeting on Monday to discuss the recent development in the peace process, added that the Palestinians plan to send a delegation of five people to discuss with Hamas ways to end the split with Al-Fatah and reach national reconciliation.
The meeting brought together Al-Fatah movement’s Central Committee, the PLO Executive Committee and the secretaries-general of the Palestinian factions in Ramallah.
Barghouti said the Palestinian leadership will resume its meeting on Tuesday to further discuss the latest developments in the peace process and the results of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel has refused to release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners unless the Palestinian Authority agrees to extend the negotiations for another year unconditionally.
Kerry had cancelled his scheduled meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in Ramallah to meet instead with the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and the head of the Palestinian intelligence service General Majed Faraj in Jerusalem; however, the meeting results were not disclosed to the public.
Diplomatic sources claimed that Kerry cancelled his meeting with Abbas in Ramallah because his first meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exceeded its scheduled time, running nearly five hours.
“Palestine was a land without a people for a People without a land” and “Palestinians do not exist” are not just statements made decades ago by Zionist leaders but are made still today (even a US presidential candidate in 2012). The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (7/15/01) reported that: “… giving his audience (Likud leaders) a bit of advice on how to deal with foreign interviewers (Bejamin Netanyahu said): ‘Always, irrespective of whether you’re right or not, you must always present your side as right.'”
We are all familiar with the incredible PR repeated ad nauseum about Israel. From “security” to “terrorism” to “wanting peace”, we are inundated in corporate media with these images that are divorced from reality. With effort of Zionists, Wikipedia and other internet sites are full of this nonsense. It is not innocuous. Mythologies and lies are used to justify everything from ethnic cleansing to use of white phosphorous on civilians. They are the tools used to keep Jews and people around the world in a state of apathy and to confuse them with things like: Well: these “Arabs” and “Jews” have been fighting and it is almost genetic and nothing can be done to stop it. For an example to the callousness of these lies, see this video and then read the articles and data below that debunks these lies.
This year will mark 64 years since the founding of the state of Israel on the ruins of 540 Palestinian villages and towns. As 7 million of the 11 million Palestinians in the world remain refugees or displaced people denied basic human rights it is more important to debunk myths and lies. I updated this list to now include 64 lies/myths (one for each year). For those who want to further deepen their understanding, I suggest a list of books and documents in my syllabus on human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
Please send me your contributions/additions whether in other lies not mentioned here or in further quotes and data on the listed lies. Email contributions to mazin@qumsiyeh.org. Suggested use for the data as it accumulates is a handy place for finding information to develop your knowledge in a way that can be used in meaningful discussions and for sending to chat rooms, list-serves, editors, politicians and others.
As Nathan Chofshi wrote in the Jewish Newsletter: “We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we have to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed… we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.”(New York, 9 February 1959, cited in Erskine Childers, ‘The Other Exodus’ in Spectator, London, 12 May 1961)
3. The myths of national origins, chosenness, collective rights for a religion etc
– Archaeology refutes the Bible’s claim to history By Daniel Lazare
– Did Jewish Slaves Build the Pyramids?
– King David Was a Nebbish: ROCKING ISRAEL TO ITS BIBLICAL CORE
– Shattering a ‘national mythology’ By Ofri Ilani
–Israeli Icon under fire
–The Origins of the Jews By Yossi Schwartz
–A mosaic of people: …the DNA evidence by Ellen Levy-Coffman
–Who is a Jew
–Palestine in Wikipedia
–Was there a place called Palestine Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon. Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and doesn’t want to hear about it Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999
–more here
-Silberman, Neil Asher and Israel Finkelstein. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Touchstone, 2002.
-Greenberg, Gary. 101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History. Sourcebooks, 2002.
Whitelam, Keith W. The invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. New York, Routledge. 1997
-Raed, Basem. Hidden Histories: Palestine and The Eastern Mediterranean. Pluto Press. 2010.
-Sand, Shlomo (Author), Yael Lotan (Translator). The Invention of the Jewish People. Verso, 2009.
4. Innocent Jews wanting to “return home” were rejected from the start by local Arabs for no good reason
– Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Ginsberg) wrote the following in 1891: “In all things it is our custom to learn nothing from the past for the future. There is certainly one thing we could have learned from our past and present history: how careful we must be not to arouse the anger of other people against ourselves by reprehensible conduct. How much more, then, should we be careful, in our conduct toward a foreign people among whom we live once again, to walk together in love and respect, and needless to say in justice and righteousness. And what do our brethren in Eretz Israel do? Quite the opposite! They were slaves in their land of exile, and they suddenly find themselves with unlimited freedom, the kind of wild freedom to be found only in a country like Turkey. This sudden change has engendered in them an impulse to despotism, as always happens when ‘a slave becomes a king,’ (Proverbs 30:22) and behold they walk with the Arabs in hostility and cruelty, unjustly encroaching on them, shamefully beating them for no good reason, and even bragging about what they do, and there is no one to stand in the breach and call a halt to this dangerous and despicable impulse. To be sure our people are correct in saying that the Arab respects only those who demonstrate strength and courage, but this is relevant only when he feels that his rival is acting justly; it is not the case if there is reason to think his rival’s actions are oppressive and unjust. Then, even if he restrains himself and remains silent forever, the rage will remain in his heart and he is unrivaled in ‘taking vengeance and bearing a grudge.’ (Leviticus 19:18)” “Emet Me-Eretz Yisrael” (Truth from the Land of Israel), 29 May 1891, 21 Iyyar 5651 Translated by Alan Dowty.
-Mandel, Neville J. The Arabs and Zionism before World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
-Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of hope and empowerment. Pluto Press 2010. Chapter 5 on “Popular Resistance During the Ottoman Rule”
5. Ben Gurion (who became Israel’s first Prime Minister) and Zionist leadership before 1948 war had no intention to drive the native Palestinians out.
As early as 1917 (when Palestine was 96% Christian/Muslim and 3% Jewish), Ben Gurion stated “Within the the next twenty years, we must have a Jewish majority in Palestine.” (Shabtai Teveth, p. 43). In 1936 he stated that the future Israel must “become a force, and the Arabs respect force..these days it is not right but might which prevails. It is more important to have force than justice on one’s side” (Shabtai Teveth, p. 191). In 1937 he said “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had…MORE than a state, government and sovereignty-this is national consolidation in a free homeland.” (Righteous Victims, p. 142). in 1938, he wrote “With compulsory transfer we have vast areas …. I support compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England …. Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. …. But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 117). In Feb 1948 “The war will GIVE us the land. The concept of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are ONLY CONCEPTS for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning.” (Benny Morris, p. 170 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180). And in early May 1948, Ben-Gurion approved establishing the “Transfer Committee” to oversee “the cleaning up (nikui in Hebrew) of the Arab settlements, cultivation of fields and their settlement, and the creation of labor battalion to carry out this work.” (Benny Morris, p. 137). Yitzhak Rabin wrote in his diary soon after Lydda’s and Ramla’s occupation on 10th-11th of July 1948: “After attacking Lydda (later called Lod) and then Ramla, …. What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities … What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out!. ‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring, …. Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook”. (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207) .David Ben Gurion also recognized that “The (upcoming) war will give us the land. The concept of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are only concepts for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning”. In his diaries he said regarding Palestinian refugees “We must do everything to ensure they never do return” and to the Sunday Times “The old will die and the young will forget”. Under Ben Gurion’s direction, Transfer Committee was officially set up to effect ethnic cleansing. I don’t understand your optimism. “Why should the Arabs make Peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural; we have taken their country.” Ben Gurion in 1956 Quoted by Nahum Goldman, former President of World Zionist Congress, in “The Jewish Paradox” Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1978, p99.
6. Palestinians want/ed to drive Jews and Israel into the sea
(variant: Israel was willing to share)
–Israel Pushed Palestinians into the Sea
-Today 7 million of the 11 million Palestinians around the world are refugees or displaced people. Those who remain in Palestine are in shrinking areas that as of 2011 consisted of 8.3% of our historic homeland (they include areas in the Galilee, the triangle, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, teh Negev, and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli population according to the Israeli central bureau of statistics is 7,510,000 of which 5,984,500 are “Jews and others” (presumably the others are Druze, Russian non-Jews, and similar categories) and 1,525,500 Palestinian Arabs (1). The population of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is 4 million allowed to live on areas A & B, small parts of the 22% of Palestine occupied since 1967 (2). The total area allowed for Palestinian use is 2.5% of the area of pre-1967 Israel (3) plus areas A & B of the West Bank . In total this comes to 2.5% of 78% and 29% of the 22% that is the West Bank and Gaza (4). The total geographic access to all remaining Palestinians(5.525 million) is thus 1.95%+6.38%=8.33% while the Jewish and other population (Zionist preferred) consists of 5.5 million with access to the remaining lands comprising 91.67% of historic Palestine. What this means is that the Jewish population (most of it new immigrants) has access to about 9 times more land per person than the remaining native Palestinians. If we add the Palestinian refugees outside the country (total Palestinian population per PCBS is 10.9 million), the disparity only gets more pronounced. When you consider that before the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, 93% of the land was used by Palestinian natives and now only 8.3%, you can see the colossal level of land theft.
References
1) http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/yarhon/b1_e.htm
2) http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=3&id=1746
3) see http://www.indypendent.org/2007/12/09/israeli-democracy-arabs-need-not-apply
4) http://www.poica.org/pal-in-a-century/pal-in-century.php
8. Land was purchased, Palestinians were not ethnically cleansed
-See this chapter on refugees in my book which analysis all aspects of this including myths about origins of the refugee catastrophe
– Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York, 1987, p. 223, citing Record of the Knesset, vol. 1, 1949, session 43
– Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. London/Boston: 1987, p. 145.
– See also “How refugee land ended up as Jewish National Fund lands” (and it is not “abandoned” it was confiscated illegally and refugees are being prevented from returning to their lands by an illegal and racist apartheid system).
–With all due respect for the ‘blue box’ by Meron Benvenisty in Haaretz. In Hebrew
– THE MYTH that the Arab refugees fled because the Arab radios urged them to do so was analyzed by Erskine B. Childers in the London Spectator May 12, 1961. An examination of British and US radio monitoring records turned up no such appeals; on the contrary there were appeals and “even orders to the civilians of Palestine, to stay put…”
-see also these books Abu-Sitta, Salman. Google for writings available on the internet
Benvenisti, Meron. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. Translated by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2000.
Sami Hadawi. Bitter Harvest: A modern history of Palestine. Olive Branch Press, New York. 1998.
Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
Shlaim, Avi. Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Segev, Tom. 1949, The First Israelis. New York: Owl Books by Henry Holt, 1998.
9. There was an Exchange of population, Jews came from Arab Countries to Israel in exchange Arabs left Israel
Variant: Jews of Iraq and Arab Countries were persecuted and expelled
-See Jews of Iraq
–and this
–and this dedicated website
(see for example an articulation of this by an AIPAC introduced bill in Congress that demands that “any explicit reference to the required resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue is matched by a similar explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.” (http://www.standwithus.com/website/news_post.asp?NPI=50)
– Detailed answers are in resources listed under myth 8 above. In brief, when Israel was founded, there were 600,000 Jews and 1.6 million Christians and Muslims in Palestine.n 700-800,000 Palestinians were made refugees by a deliberate process. It had nothing to do with the subsequent events in Poland, Morocco or any other country. Israel upon its foundi9ng of course was interested in bringing Jewish immigrants from many countries (these are not called refugees er international law). To achieve this, the Zionist movement and the nascent state of Israel used all sorts of tactics from propaganda to incitement to even violence to scare Jews to leave their countries and come to occupied Palestine (the new state of Israel). See for example what happened in Iraq articulated by Iraqi Jew Naeim Gilad in his book “Ben Gurion’s Scandals” (Mossad put bombs in front of Jewish community centers and even a synagogue to scare Iraqi Jews to leave). Also it was the Zionist movement that lobbied the US congress and other Western governments not to increase quoatas for European Jewish migration to those countries so as to leave only one door open: migration to Palestine.
10. The UN Partitioned Palestine creating a Jewish state, Arabs rejected this and Zionists Accepted
– See The myth of the UN Creation of Israel Detailed analysis
-In 1947, Private land in Palestine was 93% owned by Christian and Muslim Palestinians and only 7% by Jews (and half of those wee not Zionists but native Palestinians). Today many people like to cite one (but only this one) resolution of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 181) which included a RECOMMENDATION of partition. This resolution is not a binding resolution and was never implemented but let us deal with it (there were many others that also were not implemented including the one about the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands).
-The partition resolution was pushed through by the US in violation of the UN Charter and its mandate to allow self-determination of local people. A referendum was suggested but rejected. The nascent Arab states also suggested a form of one state with equality and protection of all minorities but this was also rejected by the Zionists and the Truman administration. Truman reversed Roosevelt’s policies on this issue because he wanted to win election (favors wth the Zionist lobby, see Myth 39 below for details and sources). But in any case, the Zionist leadership did not accept most of the points in UNGA 181 (they rejected the borders, they rejected internationalization of Jerusalem, they rejected the admonition not to remove Palestinians from the Jewish state, they rejected economic union etc). Since there was no leadership of the Palestinian people (decimated by the British by the end of 1939), it is meaningless to speak of rejecting this UNGA resolution by Palestinians. It is true that the newly independent Arab countries (many of them puppets of Britain and France at the time) rejected it. There was good reason to reject it by all people of good conscience (it divided a country against the wishes of its inhabitants). We must also recall that the recommendation was to give 55% of Palestine to a Jewish state and 45% to an aRAB STATE
-The Conciliation Commission got the agreement of both Israel and Arab states on an identical document May 12, 1949 called the Lausanne Protocol. It stated:
“The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, anxious to achieve as quickly as possible the objectives of the General Assembly resolution of 11 December 1948 (UNGA 194), regarding refugees, the respect for their rights and preservation of their property, as well as territorial and other questions, has proposed to the delegation of Israel and to the delegations of the Arab States that the working document attached hereto (UNGA Partition resolution 181 of 1947) be taken as a basis for discussions with the Commission. The interested delegations have accepted this proposal with the understanding that the exchanges of views which will be carried on by the Commission with the two parties will bear upon the territorial adjustments necessary to the above-indicated objectives.” For full link click here Lausanne, 12 May 1949)
-Israel then rejected the partition boundaries and proposed to take over all of Palestine (but leaving the issue of the West Bank for “discussion”). It also rejected implementing its obligations on the issue of Palestinian refugees .
– In his guidelines to the delegation in Lausanne with respect to negotiating peace, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Moshe Sharett, pointed out that “it behooves us to do so not with haste and trepidation but by revealing strength and the ability to exist even without official peace”. According to Sharett, since official peace was not a vital necessity, Israel had nothing to lose from procrastination. (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 215)
-In 1970 and 1971, Anwar Sadat approached Israel through the US for terms of peace that were more generous than what Israel accepted a few years later. Israel turned it down and it took a war (October 1973) to jolt them into understanding the limits of military power.
13. The US is an “honest broker”
-see Book by Naseer Aruri: Dishonest Broker for history of us involvement
-“Israel’s dependence on the United States is far Greater than suggested by the sum of $3 billion. Israel’s physical existence depends on the Americans in both military and political terms. Without the US, we would not be equipped with the latest fighter planes and all other advanced weapons. Without the American veto, we would long have been expelled from every international organization not to speak of the UN, which would have imposed sanctions on us that would have paralysed Israel’s International trade, since we cannot exist without importing raw materials. For the same reason, it is wrong to divide the American money up into military aid of $1.8 billion and civilian aid of $1.2 billion. What we are getting is really unmarked dollar bills…” Nehemia Stressler, Haaretz, May 12, 1989
14. Islam is intent on taking over the world
A good summary of this Zionist pedaled discourse is in the book “Islamic Imperialism” by Efraim Karsh (2007, Yale University Press, New Haven and London) of which thousands were printed and distributed free to clergy and opinion makers around the US (the Zionist group cryptically named “Institute on Religion and Democracy”, Washington, D.C. was distributing it free). Muslims have been victimized by colonial powers for hundreds of years and have no coherent political or military power. Most of the countries with Muslim majority are ruled by puppets of the US which are now being toppled by popular demand. US forces are in over 140 countries (at least two dozen Muslim majority). A lot of the fundamentalist groups that are now used as evidence of this pan-ISlamic desire to take on the world were created or supported by the West. A religion that is the faith and inspiration of 1.6 billion people is like Christianity (2 billion people). Such a large number of people means by nature that some are bad people who use their religion for bad purposes. But in actually, the big wars in the world had nothing to do with religion (WWI and WWII). People use religion occasionally such as happened during the the Crusades and now with Zionist colonization of Palestine.
15. “Israel’s centrality in Jewish life” manifest by the creed developed and advocated by Zionists “Am Yisrael Chai” meaning People of Israel (=Jews) live.
– For this deep psychological pathos that puts Jews above any other humans, see these books
Ellis, Marc, Out of the Ashes.
Braverman, Mark. Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land. Austin: Synergy Books, 2010.
Kimmerling, Baruch. The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: Society, Society and the Military. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Meyer, Hajo G. The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed. G.MeyerBooks, 2007
Nathan, Susan. The Other Side of Israel: My Journey across the Jewish-Arab Divide. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
Reinhart, Tanya. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948. New York: Seven Stories, 2002.
– also see My one and only Love
– and Response to Rosenfeld
16. Zionism had a positive influence on world affairs
-Bishara Bahbah and Linda Butler, Israel and Latin America: The military Connection, ST Martin’s Press, NY, 1986
Milton Jamail, Margo Gutierrez, It’s no secret: Israel’s military involvement in central America,
Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1986
–Zionist Terrorists Arrested Inside Mexican Congress Israel hand seen in Ivorian clash (and other strives around the world)
-“BERN, Switzerland – The Swiss government said today it had caught Israel’s spy agency trying to bug telephones on the outskirts of the Swiss capital. It was the second highly publicized Mossad bungle to embarrass the Israeli government in recent months. The espionage effort was aimed at foreigners living in Switzerland, federal prosecutor Carla del Ponte said, without elaborating. Del Ponte denied Israeli media reports that Iranian diplomats were the target of the alleged spying. She said the targets were not diplomats. Switzerland has demanded an apology from Israel, the Foreign Minstry said. It said it had had no immediate response from Israel. … At a news conference in Bern, del Ponte said five Israeli agents were detained as they tried to plant the bugs a week ago. All but one were released and are believed to have left the country. In Jerusalem today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that an Israeli citizen had been arrested in Switzerland, but declined to comment further. ” Another mess for Mossad: Israeli spy agency accused of bugging Swiss phones. The Associated Press 26 February 1998. by Irene Harnischberg
-“A senior Israeli intelligence officer says that the hit team arrested in Switzerland were on the trail of two businessmen with Hezbollah sympathies. As contacts continued between Israel and Switzerland yesterday to free a Mossad agent detained in Berne last month, a senior Mossad officer said the true purpose of the bungled operation had been assassination and not bugging as claimed. ” March 3 1998. Times of London
– There is some evidence that World War One was expanded instead of ending in peace because Zionists pushed Brits and French to continue promising to get US to enter the war IF THEY gave them Palestine after the war. Samuel Landman, a noted British Zionist, carefully articulated in 1936 the machination of the leading Zionists on this front (http://desip.igc.org/1939sLandman.htm Samuel Landman Great Britain, The Jews and Palestine , 1936 New Zionist Press)
Michael Berkowitz, 2003. Nationalism, Zionism and ethnic mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and beyond. Brill Academic Publishers
Balfour was a reward for the Zionists getting the US to enter the war entry The Balfour Declaration and the Zimmermann Note By John Cornelius, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 1997, pages 18-20 http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0897/9708018.html
Lord Sydenham of the British House of Deputies replied prophetically to Balfour: “… the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country – Arab all around in the hinterland – may never be remedied … what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.” (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section IV)
-see also The origin of the Balfour Declaration
-Israel’s industrial and military espionage in the US
17. The 1967 war was a defensive war by Israel against enemies who wanted to destroy it
–Alan Hart on the 1967 propaganda and myth
–http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/04/six_day_war/
-Moshe Dayan described kibbutz residents who pressed Israel to take Syria’s Golan Heights in a 1997 New York Times interview: “They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land … We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was … The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”
-From POLITICIDE, Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians, by Baruch Kimmerling, Verso, 2003, pages 57-59):
“In May 1967, Gamal Abd al-Nasser made his biggest political miscalculation. After a long and bloody intervention in the Yemeni civil war, he had lost prestige in the Arab world. In order to regain that prestige and affirm Egyptian sovereignty, he made two spectacular moves: he ordered Egyptian military forces to cross the Suez Canal and, at the same time, demanded the withdrawal of UN forces deployed along the 1957 ceasefire lines. After the Yemeni debacle, the Egyptian army was certainly not ready for a war with Israel, but the Israeli General Staff had planned for many years to destroy the Egyptian military, which had been re-equipped and restructured by the Soviet Union after the 1956 War. Nasser’s move was exploited by the Israeli Government, which depicted it as a causus belli and a real threat to Israel’s security. The Israeli armed forces mobilized their full reserve system. While the two armies were positioned face-to-face, the Israeli Government, headed by Levy Eshkol, hesitated, doubting both the reality of the Egyptian threat and the necessity of resolving it militarily rather than diplomatically. Another consideration was the severe economic hardship and social strain that would result from the prolonged mobilization of almost the entire male labor force. While the government weighed its options, military officers (including Sharon) seized the opportunity to convince the public that Israel faced a genuine threat to its existence. Demonstrations called on Eshkol to quit. The increasing public pressure in addition to the hidden pressure from many on the general staff led to the establishment of a new war-oriented Cabinet that included the hawkish Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense and, for the first time, members of the ultra-nationalist party Herut, headed by Menachem Begin. The war was so well planned and prepared that at dawn, on June 5, the Israeli military intelligence and air force knew the precise location of every Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian aircraft and destroyed most of them on the ground in several hours. Sharon, in his autobiography, briefly mentioned that “on the morning of June 5, Israel’s air force was to launch a pre-preemptive attack on Egypt’s airfields.” When Israeli infantry and tank brigades attacked Egyptian military concentrations, fortifications, and bases, they already had almost absolute air superiority. One of the most significant myths rooted in the collective memory of both the Israeli and Western public is that during the 1967 War (or as the Israelis arrogantly called it, “the Six Day War”), Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, a belief that is used to justify the legitimacy of the occupation to this day.
-Both Yitzhak Rabin and Ezer Weizman clearly allude in their autobiographies to the fact that, prior to the attack of June 1967, the Israeli general staff organized a putsch, and barred any and all political solutions to the crisis. Rabin, Chief of Staff, admitted that: “Nasser didn’t want war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war He knew it and we knew it.” (Le Monde, February 28, 1968).
Levy Eshkol himself admitted that “the Egyptian layout in Sinai and the general build up there testified to a militarily defensive Egyptian set-up, south of Israel” (Yediot Ahronot, October 16, 1967).
-On August 8, 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, defending the invasion of Lebanon, said: “In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”(New York Times, August 21, 1982).”
19. The Road map is an international effort for peace in the Middle East and Palestinians reject it
-The road map is 2218 words and lacks four key words: International Law and Human Rights. It was drafted in the State Department supposedly based on the speech Bush gave in 2002 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020624-3.html ). Bush’s speech writers at the time were both Zionists: Michael Gerson and David Frum.
-The writings of Karen Kwiatkowski who retired from the Pentagon clearly documents the stranglehold of Zionist “group think” on US policy. It is claimed by official US sources that the State Department wrote the Road Map. If that is the case, this would fall under the purview of then under secretary for Political Affairs (from 2001 to 2005) Marc Grossman who is also Zionist. Other Zionists who were likely involved or at least had to give their blessings include Elliott Abrams (National Security Council Advisor) and Richard Haass (Director of Policy Planning at the State Department).
-Despite this bias, Arafat and the PNC accepted the road map and the Palestinian Authority obeys it (getting back in line under threat of withholding their tax money occasionally). Sharon said he would accept it with 14 reservations that basically make it meaningless. The Israeli government violated it regularly most conspicuously on the issue of expanding settlements and refusing to keep the territorial integrity of the WB and Gaza: restrictions on movement etc increased even started to build a wall which is contrary to this document.
20. Palestinians militants use human shields and send their kids to be killed for propaganda
-such offensive and racist statements are beneath contempt as no mother or father or human being sacrifices their children or their relatives for public relations
–The reality
21. Arabs only understand the language of force
–Check this
24. Israel takes great care not to harm civilians and never targets civilians; Israeli army most ethical army
– See Targeting Civilians
– “As a young soldier serving in the Israeli army, I was ordered to commit grave human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. My platoon meted out collective punishment on Palestinian communities, shot and killed unarmed Palestinian civilians, and enforced prolonged curfews on Palestinian villages. I witnessed the arbitrary destruction of Palestinian houses, property and agricultural land. These acts were not rare occurrences, nor were they the result of overly cruel soldiers. It was part of the norm; a habit that an Occupation soldier gets used to doing. These daily occurrences constituted, as I later understood, war crimes.” http://alawda.rso.wisc.edu/why.htm
– “I participated in the fighting on Temple Mount. I was and also shot at the demonstrations in Umm Al Fahm. But the worst event was the riots in Tiberias. Hundreds of violent Jews closed a main road and also threw firebombs at us. They almost set our car on fire, but luckily we put the fire out on time. There was stone throwing, firecrackers, and glass bottles were thrown and broke between our feet. They crossed all the red lines, my people attacked me with enormous force, and it hurts. The violence there was just like in Umm Al Fahm. According to the open-fire regulations, when firebombs are thrown, there is authorization to shoot. But we handle Jewish riots differently. To a demo like this we know in advance that we come without weapons. These are the orders from above, and we used only gas”. Tal Etlinger, a border police soldier, Yediot Aharonot, 17/11/2000 (translated by Irit Katriel, iritka@internet-zahav.net.il)
– “The Israeli soldiers who volunteers to serve in the occupied territories are considered heroes, while in truth their volunteering can be compared to that of German volunteers who served in the SS” Moshe Zimmerman, at the time Chair of Department of Germanic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, interview Yerushalayim, 4/28/1995. From the “Founding Myths of Modern Israel by Roger Garaudy
– We killed (Palestinian) police for revenge, Israeli soldiers confess By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem, The Independent Maariv in Hebrew published admissions of Israeli soldiers to committing war crimes
– Palestinians Continue to be used as human shields (Video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tomdEkOgdKU
– Use of Palestinians as human shields
– Amnesty International 2006 report on Israeli violations of Human Rights
– Article by Jonathan Cook on Targeting Civilians http://mostlywater.org/node/8568
– Israeli army forces women to strip at checkpoints http://www.imemc.org/article/49215
– Israel hits center of Red Cross http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/ambulancehit.jpg
– American NLG Lawyers Findings that Israel Violated International Law, US Domestic Law in Gaza
– Statistics on number of people killed
– Israeli who revealed “medieval-style” torture of Palestinians faces virulent backlash
26. The Deir Yassin Massacre (one of hundreds committed during the ethnic cleansing of 1947-1949) was committed by rogue elements and not mainstream Zionists
– What happened in Deir Yassin
– When the Haganah command learned of the plan of the Irgun and Lehi to conquer Deir Yassin, David Shaltiel, Haganah Commander in Jerusalem, asked them to coordinate the timing of the operation with the scheduled renewed assault on Kastel. He dispatched identical letters to Mordechai Raanan (Irgun Commander in Jerusalem) and Yehoshua Zetler (Lehi Commander in Jerusalem), in which he gave their operation his approval: To: Shapira (code-name of Zetler)
From: District Commander
I have learned that you intend to carry out an operation against Deir Yassin. I would like to call your attention to the fact that the conquest and continued occupation of Deir Yassin is one of the stages in our overall plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation on condition that you are capable of holding on to it. If you are incapable of doing so, I caution you against blowing up the village, since this will lead to the flight of the inhabitants and subsequent occupation of the ruins and the abandoned homes by enemy forces. This will make things difficult rather than contributing to the general campaign, and reoccupation of the site will entail heavy casualties for our men. An additional argument I would like to cite is that if enemy forces are drawn to the place, this will disrupt the plan to establish an aerodrome there. Ezel website
28. The lies and distortions about the Lavon affair
– From Mideastweb files
– Israel’s second Prime Minister Sharret had interesting admissions in his diary including about the Lavon affair, in which Israeli provocateurs exploded bombs in U.S. cultural centers and diplomatic establishments in Cairo and Alexandria in 1954 after being told “to break the West’s confidence in the existing (Nasser) regime… The actions should cause arrests, demonstrations and expressions of revenge. The Israeli origins should be totally covered.” The idea was to provoke mayhem, increase Jewish immigration and with other acts eventually provoke a war to acquire more territory (which happened in 1967). As retired US foreign service officer Richard Curtis wrote in the WRMEA (March 18, 1985): “When the provocateurs (young Egyptian-born Jews trained in Israel and returned to their homeland) were caught and tried, Sharett publicly denied Israeli complicity and accused the Egyptians of ‘vicious hostility to… the Jewish people.'” But in his diaries Sharett not only admitted the affair but lamented Israel’s “unleashing of the basest instincts of hate and revenge…” In another part of the diary we see this interesting tidbit: “Ben Gurion reported to the cabinet … how our four youngsters (Israeli paratrooper reservists) captured the Beduin boys one by one, how they took them to the wadi, how they knifed them to death one after the other… When I arrived in Tel Aviv an officer… came to tell me that the whole revenge operation was organized with the active help of Arik Sharon, the commander of the paratroopers battalion.”
29. Martin Luther King Jr supported Israel and Zionism and equated criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism
See Martin Luther King
30. Israel was trying to save Arab Jews
– Details on Arab Jews
See also the Lavon Affair (up)
31. Palestinians and other Arabs largely rejoiced after 9/11 attacks/Variant is that Muslims do not denounce terrorism
– See Arabs and Palestinians on September 11]
– 9/11 statements
32. Barak Made a generous offer at Camp David, Arafat rejected it and went back and started a bloody intifada
– See Robert Malley’s Fictions About the Failure at Camp David
– Uri Avnery on 12 conventional lies [http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story658.html]
– Gush Shalom data
– EI myth 5
– Electronic Intifada
– Cactus 1948
– IAP
– Mideast Facts
– Gush Shalom
– Pal Remembered
– Ottawa summary
– Aaron David Miller, a senior negotiator on the Clinton team at Camp David and an Orthodox Jew revealed that rather than serve as a true mediator in peace negotiations, successive U.S. administrations including Clinton’s have acted as “Israel’s attorney.” Kathleen Christison, “Anatomy of A Frame-Up: Camp David Redux, Counterpunch, August 15, 2005. On line here
– Press release showing that the sides were really close to hammering out an agreement at Taba which was a continuation of the negotiations until Israel withdrew (not Palestinians)
– “The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonization of Palestine. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, but the Likud government expanded settlement activity after I left office. President Ronald Reagan condemned this policy, and reaffirmed that Resolution 242 remained “the foundation stone of America’s Middle East peace effort.” President George H.W. Bush even threatened to reduce American aid to Israel. Although President Bill Clinton made strong efforts to promote peace, a massive increase of settlers occurred during his administration, to 225,000, mostly while Ehud Barak was prime minister. Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20 percent of them, leaving 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 5 percent of the occupied land.” President Jimmy Carter
-“The narrative blaming Yasser Arafat now joins a whole string of myths: the Tel Hai myth, the myth of the runaway refugees in 1948, the myth of the War of Independence as a defensive war that broke out because of an invasion by Arab armies, the myth of the few against the many, and the myth of the liberation of the homeland from the British boot – just to mention a few of the many myths that have been created here to deal with the reality that gave birth to many crises and second thoughts about the situation.” Challenging the Camp David myth, By Meron Benvenisti. Ha’aretz, Thursday, August 02, 2001
34. The people of the West Bank benefited from Israeli rule
– In September 1967 Moshe Dayan told senior staff in the Israeli Occupation Army in the West Bank that some 200,000 Palestinian Arabs had left the West Bank and Gaza Strip: “we must understand the motives and causes of the continued emigration of the Arabs, from both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and not to undermine these cause after all, we want to create a new map.” (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 338).
-“The guideline of our policy has always been the idea that a permanent situation of no peace and a latent war is the best situation for us, and that it must be maintained at all costs. … we are becoming stronger year by year in a situation of impending conflict where it is possible that actual fighting may break out from time to time. Such wars will usually be short and the results guaranteed in advance, since the gap between us and the Arabs is increasing. In this way we shall move on from occupation to further occupation. … this criminally mischievous policy has led us into the crisis we are living through today…We have not been seeking peace for twenty-five years — all declarations to that effect have been no more than coloured statements or deliberate lies. There is of course no assurance that we could have made peace with the Arabs if we had wanted to. However, it has to be heavily emphasized that we have not only made no attempts to seek peace, but have deliberately and with premeditation, sabotaged every possibility of doing so.” (Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 30 November 1973)
-From former Israel Attorney General Michael Ben Yair who wrote on 3/3/2002: “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupie territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one – progressive, liberal – in Israel; and the other – cruel, injurious – in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”
35. Christians are leaving Palestine because of persecution by Muslims not because of Zionist occupation and colonization
– See links and resources from all main Palestinian Christian denominations and other Christians around the world.
– The Christian presence in Palestine under Israeli military rule. A short clip from the award-winning film from Occupation 101 titled Voices of the Silenced Majority.
– Palestinian Christians make action against construction of Israel’s separation barrier on Palestinian Christian lands in Wadi Nis village (South of Bethlehem area,) marking Good Friday
-Christians and Muslims join hands to march on Palm Sunday insisting on right of freedom of movement. Many were arrested. Example here and here and here
– In Arabic, report about Christianity in the Middle East
36. The 1967 Occupation follows International law
-Aruri, Naseer H., ed. Occupation: Israel over Palestine, 2nd ed. Belmont, MA: AAUG Press, 1989.
-Benvenisti, Eyal “The Applicability of Human Rights Conventions to Israel and to the Occupied Territories”, Israel Law Review, Vol. 26, 1992, pp. 24-35
-Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949.
-Also see General Assembly Resolution 64/92, Applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the other occupied Arab territories, 19 January 2010
-International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Advisory Opinion, 9 July 2004
-Nasrallah, Rami and Rassem Khamaisi (ed.) The Jerusalem Urban Fabric. Jerusalem: A publication of the International Peace and Cooperation Center, 2003
-Playfair, Emma, ed. International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories: Two Decades of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Oxford, UK: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
-Qafisheh, Mutaz M. The International Law Foundations of Palestinian Nationality (Boston and the Hague: Brill, 2008).
-Segal, Rafael and Eyal Weizman (editors). A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture. Babel (Tel Aviv) and Verso (London). 2003.
-Shehadeh, Raja. From Occupation to Interim Accords: Israel and the Palestinian Territories. London; Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1997
37. Iran’s President is a Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying, Islamo-fascist who stated he will “wipe Israel off the map”
-The actual quote from Ahmedinujad: Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from). An article explaining the effort to put words in his mouth and this and another analysis
38. Zionists did not push for the war on Iraq and the conflict with Iran is also about US security not Zionist perceived self-interest.
–Letter by leading Zionists and neoconservatives asking US to attack Iraq and change its regime January 26, 1998
-See Book by Mearsheimer and Walt “Israel Lobby”
-“Groups Push For Sanctions, Fear US Will Falter on Iran,” By Ori Nir, Forward – Sep 1, 2006 issue
-“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat and actually has been since 1990 – it’s the threat against Israel.. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” Pentagon -Defense Intelligence Board Member Philip Zeikow, 10 September 2002
–Declassified Documents show early manipulation of US media and attempts to shape public opinion
–Contrary to Chomsky, the US has no interest in supporting Israel
-Challenging the power of the Israeli lobby: what should be done
-VIDEO: from Jewish Telegraphic Agency: The power of AIPAC and what they pushed for
-Lengthy but important analysis of Israeli power
39. Israel is beneficial to US interests in the Middle East
– Cost of Israel to the US
– Declassified: Massive Israeli Manipulation of US Media Exposed
– “Israel secretly maintains a large and active intelligence-gathering operation in the United States that has long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure classified documents, U.S. government officials said.” Los Angeles Times, 3 September 2004
– see target=new>[The Lobby]
– [Michael Lind] Article on the Lobby’s negative influence
– Jewish Groups To Challenge Ethics Reform, By Nathan Guttman, Forward [http://www.forward.com/articles/jewish-groups-to-challenge-ethics-reform/]
Does the Israeli Tail Wag the American Dog?
– If the United States is unable to distinguish the world’s or its own real needs from those of another state and that state’s lobby, then it simply cannot say that it always acts in its own best interests. By Kathleen and Bill Christison (ex CIA Analysts) [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17217.htm]
– Is Americans’ support of Israel unshakeable? By Linda S. Heard, Online Journal
– Israel and US interests aren’t identical By Antony Loewenstein [http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4387]
– [http://www.muckrakerreport.com/]
– Excerpt from the secret CIA assessment released November 28, 1947 on the eve of the UN “vote” and titled “The Consequences of the Partition of Palestine” (Declassified document)
“Armed hostilities between Jews and Arabs will break out if the UN General Assembly accepts the plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states…. The Jews are expected to be able to mobilize some 200,000 fighters in Palestine.. The Jewish armed groups in Palestine are well equipped and well trained in commando tactics. Initially they will achieve marked success over the Arabs because of superior organization and equipment… The US by supporting partition has already lost much of its prestige in the Near East In the event that partition is imposed on Palestine, the resulting conflict will seriously disturb the social, economic, and political stability of the Arab world, and US commercial and strategic interests will be dangerously jeopardized. … The poverty, unrest, and hopelessness upon which Communist propaganda thrives will increase throughout the Arab world. (and later in the document, p. 6) US prestige on the other hand has steadily decreased with each new indication that the US supports the Zionists. The good will enjoyed by the US at the time of the Rosevelt-Ibn Saud Conference and following backing of Lebanese and Syrian claims for independence was short lived as a result of President Truman’s support of Jewish immigration to Palestine and of the Anglo-American Committee report. Because of the long standing cultural ties between the US and the Arab world, the friendly role that the US played in the achievement of Syrian and Lebanese independence, the partial dependence of certain Arab states on oil royalties from US companies, and the promise of increased royalties in the future, the Arab states would like to maintain friendly relations with the US. … Little of this (positive) development will be possible, if the US supports a Jewish state in Palestine.”
[http://tinyurl.com/2c4kh3] Or original here
– Truman helped establish Israel (actually was the critical element in arm-twisting countries to vote for partition which was contrary to the UN Charter of self determination). Zionist propaganda has it that this support was because of deeply held beliefs in that cause (Jews were persecuted so need a country of their own). But facts are otherwise. Truman himself admitted in a private cabinet meeting that he is doing it for money and votes. – “when the election was coming up in 1946 in New York, the group of New York Jews called upon Mr. Truman. [Alan Taylor, op. cit. p.93] Emmanuel Cellar was the head of this committee. Rabbi Steven Wise and several others were in it. They called upon Mr. Truman and said, “We have just been talking with Mr. Thomas Dewey. He is willing to come out and declare for a Jewish state, and we are going to turn our money and urge the Jews to vote for him unless you beat him to it.” Then Emmanuel Cellar pounded upon Mr. Truman’s desk and said, “And if you don’t come out for a Jewish state we’ll run you out of town.” This, I’m sure, is the threat that Mr. Truman refers to in his book, saying, “The extreme Zionists threatened me.” They were Emmanuel Cellar, Rabbi Steven Wise, etc. These are not the extreme Zionists, these are just the run of the mill Zionists. What Mr. Truman did was to cave in to these threats that they would support Mr. Dewey. In that way he got the Jewish money and the Jewish vote. His decision was not made from the point of view of what was going to result in the Middle East, but what was going on in the United States.” Edwin M. Wright at the time of the State Department (source [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/wright.htm] )
– See also [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/26309.html] and Truman diaries which show how he really thought:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40678-2003Jul10]
-Israel stole US nuclear technology [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/washington/29nixon.html]
– “How the Israel Lobby Took Control of the U.S. Congress” (most people have no idea how methodically AIPAC & Co. went about this): http://criminalstate.com/2009/07/how-the-israel-lobby-took-control-of-us-foreign-policy/
– A longer analysis appears in the introduction to Guilt By Association which appears on the Criminal State website (just above Chomsky’s blurb): http://criminalstate.com/guilt-by-association/
– Prof. Wm. Robinson stood up to the ADL Thought Police at UC Santa Barbara when he refused to fold his hand (he’s Jewish): http://criminalstate.com/2009/07/treason-in-plain-sight/
Note the background role of UC President Mark Yudof and his wife. In an Information Age, if the conduct described is not treason, what is?
40. Israel accidentally attacked the USS Liberty in International waters because it was mistaken for an Egyptian ship
– CIA Director Richard Helms said: “The board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing …”
See [http://ussliberty.org] for lots of other data including testimony of survivors.
– Alison Wier on USA Today and USS Liberty [http://counterpunch.org/weir06232007.html]
– WHY SHOULD MY FAMILY STILL LOVE ME?
[http://ussliberty.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/why-should-my-family-still-love-me/]
41. Zionist in America are loyal to the US Constitution and have no Tribal allegiances to contradict US interests
– Secret trials for terrorists, says US judge: A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists, more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an end to counter-terrorism efforts being “hog-tied” by the US constitution. Judge Richard Posner, a supposedly liberal-leaning jurist regarded by many as a future US Supreme Court candidate, said traditional concepts of criminal justice were inadequate to deal with the terrorist threat and the US had ‘over-invested’ in them…”
[http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Ftheaustralian.news.com.au%2Fstory%2F0%2C20867%2C21986986-2702%2C00.html%3F]
– The New Israel Lobby in Action (David Noble) http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2005/11/01/209/
– See this cartoon by Bendib on the clamour of presidential candidates to suck up to the Zionist lobby. http://www.bendib.com/newones/2007/june/small/6-9-The-Race.jpg
42. Rachel Corrie was accidentally killed while protecting the house of terrorist
[http://www.rachelcorrie.org/]
[http://www.criticalconcern.com/rachelcorrie.html]
[http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309199_corrierebut28.html]
[http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=DF899DD539B2344385256CEC007008D5]
43. Israel did not deliberately attack a UN Compound in Qana, Lebanon. “We want it to be clear it was not a deliberate attack because Israel would never target a UN force. It is not part of our policies; it is not part of our values” Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
– From Robert Fisk’s April 19, 1996 article “Massacre in Sanctuary” in The Independent (UK): “Qana, southern Lebanon – It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world’s protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong. In front of a burning building of the UN’s Fijian battalion headquarters, a girl held a corpse in her arms, the body of a grey- haired man whose eyes were staring at her, and she rocked the corpse back and forth in her arms, keening and weeping and crying the same words over and over: “My father, my father.” A Fijian UN soldier stood amid a sea of bodies and, without saying a word, held aloft the body of a headless child. “The Israelis have just told us they’ll stop shelling the area”, a UN soldier said, shaking with anger. “…
[http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/robert_fisk_qana.html]
44. The “security barrier” Israel is building is not a land grab and is about Security
Facts about “the wall”
-After most of the residents were ethnically cleansed, a wall of fences was built around remaining 3500 Palestinians in Al-Majdal to starve them until they agreed to leave “voluntarily” in 1951 (long after the end of the 1948 war). The city was renamed Ashqelon
-The wall around Gaza was completed before even the first Palestinian suicide bombing
-The wall was less than 25% complete when Hamas made a political decision to stop bombings and run for elections in 2006. Hamas held on to its end of this even though they were not allowed to govern.
-International court of justice ruled it illegal regardless of any consideration since it is built in the occupied areas (just like the colonies illegal and subject to 4th Geneva convention)
-Even today in 2013, the wall is actually less than 70% complete; nearly 10,000 Palestinians cross to the Israeli side without Israeli permission to work DAILY and so any person interested in doing violence could do it
-The wall zig zags in ways clearly intended to capture maximum agricultural lands and natural resources instead of being more secure straighter lines in most of its currently built course.
-There are Palestinians on both sides of the wall (hundreds of thousands on the so called “Israeli side”)
-There are Israelis on both sides of it so it cannot be a security issue.
– See Stop the wall resources and fact sheets
– Video
– see also this discussion in electronic intifada on the naming issue
45. Israel Demolishes Homes for security
– [http://www.icahd.org/eng/faq.asp?menu=9&submenu=1]
– Rafah Aerial maps before and after
[http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Rafah-16-10-03/Gaza%20segregation%20wall.jpg]
[http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Rafah-16-10-03/Rafah.jpg]
46. Israel only imprisons those responsible for terrorism
– Over 11,000 political prisoners are held by Israel today. Over the past 40 years, Israel imprisoned nearly 40% of male population of the occupied areas. One third are/were held in administrative detention without charge or trial. Hundreds of minors are also held at any one time.
– See “A regrettable indifference” By Amira Hass Haaretz [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/797419.html]
47. Israel does not make or use weapons of mass destruction
– Dai Williams’ report on the use of uranium weapons by Israel in Lebanon last summer is at: UN priorities for investigating uranium and other suspected illegal weapons in the Israel/Lebanon conflict. – by Dai Williams – 2006-09-01 [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060901&articleId=3123]. The weapons were flown by the US to Israel. The airplane was supposed to land for refueling at Ireland’s shannon Internation Airport, but the Irish government refused permission for it to land on Irish soil, so the plane landed at Prestwick, a small airport in Scotland, south of Glasgow. This subsequently caused some difficulties for the Blair Government. At that time, Dai Williams, an internation expert on DU, advised the Scots that if the plane crashed on landing or take-off, all of southern Scotland would be contaminated by the radioactive weapons on board. This incident was not known in the US. If you need more information on it, look at
[http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/campanas/stopwar/uranium_weapons/index.html].
– William Broad, “The Hidden Travels of The Bomb,” NY Times, 12/9/08: “Thomas C. Reed, a veteran of the Liverpool weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force and Danny B. Stillman, former director of intelligence at Los Alamos, have teamed up in “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation” to show the importance of moles, scientists with divided loyalties and – most important – the subtle and not so subtle interests of nuclear states… It also names many conflicted scientists, including luminaries like Isidor I. Rabi. The Nobel laureate worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II and later sat on the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a birthplace of Israel’s nuclear arms… A lesser pathway involves France. The book says it drew on Manhattan Project veterans and shared intimate details of its bomb program with Israel, with whom it had substantial commercial ties. By 1959, the book says, dozens of Israeli scientists “were observing and participating in” the French program of weapons design. The book adds that in early 1960, when France detonated its first bomb, doing so in the Algerian desert, “two nations went nuclear.” And it describes how the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s own atomic developments. It adds that, in the autumn of 1966, Israel conducted a special, non-nuclear test “2,600 feet under the Negev desert.” The next year it built its first bomb. Israel, in turn, shared its atomic secrets with South Africa. The book discloses that the two states exchanged some key ingredients for the making of atom bombs: tritium to South Africa, uranium to Israel. And the authors agree with military experts who hold that Israel and South Africa in 1979 jointly detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Island, more than one thousand miles south of Cape Town. Israel needed the test, it says, to develop a neutron bomb.”
48. Israel complies with International law and International obligations
– [http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/un.html]
– [http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id396.html]
49. Arabs in Israel are treated equal. Variant, Israel is a Democracy
– See detailed analysis of some Israeli laws here: [http://www.mediamonitors.net/mazin6.html] and her [http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter7/]
–Database of Discriminatory Israeli laws compiled by Adalah
– Amnesty International reported: “In Israel several laws are explicitly discriminatory. These can be traced back to Israel’s foundation in 1948 which, driven primarily by the racist genocide suffered by Jews in Europe during the Second World War, was based on the notion of a Jewish state for Jewish people. Some of Israel’s laws reflect this principle and as a result discriminate against non-Jews, particularly Palestinians who had lived on the lands for generations. Various areas of Israeli law discriminate against Palestinians. The Law of Return, for instance, provides automatic Israeli citizenship for Jewish immigrants, whereas Palestinian refugees who were born and raised in what is now Israel are denied even the right to return home. Other statutes explicitly grant preferential treatment to Jewish citizens in education, public housing, health, and employment.” ‘Racism and the Administration of Justice’, Amnesty International (2001), also found at [http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/racismreport.pdf]
– Human Rights Watch on an aspect of Israel racist structures
“The state controls 93 percent of the land in Israel, and a government agency, the Israel Land Administration (ILA), manages and allocates this land. The ILA lacks any mandate to disburse land in a fair and just fashion, and members of the Jewish National Fund, which has an explicit mandate to develop land for Jewish use only, constitute almost half of the ILA’s governing council, occupying all the seats not held by Israeli government ministries.” [http://hrw.org/reports/2008/iopt0308/]
– To quote Israeli Arab writer and Knesset Member, Ahmed Tibi: “…dutifully defining the state [of Israel] as ‘Jewish and democratic,’ ignores the fact that in practice ‘democratic’ refers to Jews, and the Arabs are nothing more than citizens without citizenship.” (Ma’ariv, 1.6.2005)
– Jewishness versus democracy – By Azmi Bishara
– Is Israel a democracy
– U.S. State Department report on International Religious Freedom: “Arabs in Israel…are subject to various forms of discrimination.. (the government) does not provide Israeli Arabs…with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities as Jews.”
– Ronnie Kasrils, minister for intelligence in the South African government and of the Jewish faith: “The Palestinian minority in Israel has for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing and land possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that this minority is allowed to vote hardly redresses the rampant injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from the very definition of the ‘Jewish state’, and have virtually no influence on the laws, or political, social and economic policies. Hence, their similarity to the black South Africans [under apartheid].” (The Guardian, 25 May 2005)
– “The Committee [UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights] notes with grave concern that the Status Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries, including the Jewish National Fund, to control most of the land in Israel, since these institutions are chartered to benefit Jews exclusively. Despite the fact that the institutions are chartered under private law, the State of Israel nevertheless has a decisive influence on their policies and thus remains responsible for their activities. A State party cannot divest itself of its obligations under the Covenant by privatizing governmental functions. The Committee takes the view that large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties to non-Jews. Thus, these practices constitute a breach of Israel’s obligations under the Covenant. [http://www.unhchr.ch:80/tbs/doc.nsf/Symbol/df35bf5b5ee94d01802566d5003dd6cd?Opendocument]
– “The Israeli-Arab sector suffers from discrimination with regards to government services”, outgoing Israeli Northern Police District chief, Commissioner Ya’akov Borovsky to Maariv newspaper, 8/31/04 [http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=printArticle&articleID=10778]
– Israel’s Strategic Threat by NEVE GORDON (on the persecution of anyone trying to change Israel to a democratic state for its citizens), The Nation, 4/30/07
[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070430/gordon]
– “Unrecognized Palestinians” (on the racism and oppression of Palestinians within the “Green line”/Palestine 1948) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6719]
– Israel: Multiple patterns of internal displacement affect several ethnic and religious groups. Summary report in PDF: [http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/179CDBD849DB9626C125734700336ADC/$file/Israel_Overview_Aug 07.pdf]
Full report in PDF: http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/19DE321CE3CA6F50C125734700346BA5/$file/Israel+-August+2007.pdf
– Click here for very interesting program (four videos) about Palestinians in ’48. It’s called Blue ID and is a 5 part program being shown on an Israeli TV channel. In Artabic and Hebrew
– Palestinians in Israel: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet By Anton Shammas
[http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol3no1/palest.html]
– “The following lists may not run in the elections: A list which acts directly or indirectly against the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people ….”
[http://www.knesset.gov.il/deSCRIPTion/eng/eng_mimshal_beh.htm#6]
In other words, if you oppose Israel being “the state of the Jewish people” (ie. advocate that it be a state of its citizens) you cannot run.
– Ehud Olmert, then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, commented in April 2004 that; “More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against ‘occupation,’ in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state.”[29] Olmert made a similar remark in November 2007: “If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished.”[30][31][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy]
-¨Hazem Jamjoum: Not an Analogy: Israel and the Crime of Apartheid.¨http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10440.shtml
51. Zionists believe in and allow free speech
– [The case is closed]: How human rights activists are targeted
–Zionism’s first political assassination: When Dutch poet and journalist Jacob Israel de Haan became too vocal with his anti-Zionist writing in Mandatory Palestine, the Haganah silenced him
52. Zionism was a response to anti-Semitism (corollary Palestinians are anti-Semites)
– I urge everyone top read Lenni Brenner’s book “51 Documents: History of Nazi-Zionist Collaboration”. Click here for a take. Here is an example of a message to Nazi Germany asking for alliance by a group led by a future Prime Minister of Israel (Menachem Begin) and a leader of Likud (Sharon’s party).
-Who broke the boycott of Nazi Germany in the 1930s (yes, it was the Zionists), see Edwin Black, the Transfer agreement.
– FDR, Ruth Gruber and me: Zionists stymie WWII rescue plan, by Ronald Bleier October 2006
– See also this from Kasztner
– Bauer, Yehuda, Jews for sale?: Nazi-Jewish negotiations, 1933-1945, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994.
– There are lots more data. A summary is in Chapter 6 of my book.
– “Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting” by Ruth Linn, Cornell U. Press, 2004. It’s about Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler who escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 and gave detailed information to the Jewish Council of Slovakia that could have saved a large proportion of the Hungarian Jews who had not yet been deported. But the Jewish Council suppressed the information in order to get a trainload of their own (Zionist) people out and aided in the death of 437,000 Hungarian Jews.
-Holocaust survivors speak out on Israel (videos): Hajo Meyer (author of The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed. G. MeyerBooks, 2007) and Hedy Epstein (strip searched at Ben Gurion’s airport)
-This note from Hajo G. Meyer, 85 y.o. survivor of the concentration camps: “Are you aware that besides the Ha’avarah agreement the terrorist and murderer Avraham Stern had written to the Nazis on January 11th 1941 to fight with his Irgun forces together with the Nazis against the British! That is, I think, still stronger stuff. Cordial regards. Hajo “
53. Zionists do not deny other peoples sufferings (other than Palestinians)
The long term denial and lobby against recognition of the Armenian Genocide remains the classic example.
54. Israel is not an apartheid regime
– Read the study: Apartheid; Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, Vienna: Gesellschaft fur Phenomenologie und kritische Anthropologie, 2007, 3 rd edition, [http://www.dada.at/gems/gesellschaft/Apartheid.pdf]
– “Brothers in arms – Israel’s secret pact with Pretoria,” By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, February 7, 2006
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel]
-In March 2002, former attorney-general, Michael Ben-Yair even admitted Israel’s apartheid essence: “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one “progressive, liberal” in Israel; and the other “cruel, injurious” in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.”
-The architect of apartheid in South Africa — Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd — wrote in 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state” [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hendrik_Verwoerd]
– Israeli laws is an apartheid state [http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm]
-The collaboration between apartheid Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa. “During the second world war the future South African prime minister John Vorster was interned as a Nazi sympathiser. Three decades later he was being feted in Jerusalem. In the second part of his remarkable special report, Chris McGreal investigates the clandestine alliance between Israel and the apartheid regime, cemented with the ultimate gift of friendship – A-bomb technology” [http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1704037,00.html]
– [http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1703245,00.html]
-“Disengagement in Gaza, Consolidation in the West Bank”.. Ariel Sharon and his right hand man Dov Weisglass
-“Us here, them there” Ehaud Barak
–Arnon Sofer calls for an explicit policy of “geographic separation and ethnic separation” to solve the “demographic problem”
-From former Israel Attorney General Michael Ben Yair who wrote on 3/3/2002: “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupie territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one – progressive, liberal – in Israel; and the other – cruel, injurious – in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.
-Desmond Tutu on israeli apartheid [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1957644.stm]
Apartheid Israel: A Beacon of Hope? By Prof. VIRGINIA TILLEY Counterpunch, 5 December 2006 [http://counterpunch.org/tilley12052006.html]
– Shulamit Aloni, a former minister of education in Israel, confirms, in an article in the Israeli daily, the aparheid nature of Israeli policies: “The US Jewish Establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp. … Indeed Apartheid does exist here. …” { Yediot Acharonot, Jan. 5, 2007}
– Derek Tozer, an Israeli thinker, stated: “The official policy of the government (of Israel) is unequivocal. Arabs, like the Jews in Nazi Germany, are officially “class B citizens, a fact which is recorded on their identity cards.”
– The late Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, summed it up accurately in his statement: “It is my considered opinion that the state of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term. In this state, people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried today mainly in co-operation with the institutions of the Zionist movement.” (Quote taken from “The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionist State of Israel”, an article published in Pi-Ha’aton, the weekly newspaper of the students of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 1975.)
– the architect of apartheid in South Africa — Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd — wrote in 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hendrik_Verwoerd
– http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm
Recommended Books
– Settler Colonialism in South Africa and the Middle East, George Jabbour, 1970;
– Israel and South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship, Richard Stevens and Abdelwahhab Elmessiri, 1976;
– Undercutting Sanctions: Israel, the U.S. and South Africa, Jane Hunter, 1986;
– Besieged Bedfellows: Israel and the Land of Apartheid, Benjamin Joseph, 1988
57. Jihad and Mujahideen refers to violence against infidels/non-muslims
– Partial Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 37: Book 37, Number 4330: Narrated AbuSa’id al-Khudri:
The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: The best jihad in the path of Allah is (to speak) a word of justice to an oppressive ruler. http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/abudawud/037.sat.html#037.4330
59. Israel seeks peace with Syria
Operation peace for the winery: Israel does not want peace with Syria by Gideon Levy [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/769339.html]
CCR client Maher Arar was changing planes at JFK on his way home to Canada from a family vacation when he was detained by the U.S. authorities (themselves collaborating with Israel) and ‘rendered’ to Syria, where he was tortured and held for nearly a year video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ufVGy]
60. The mainstream media is biased against Israel
The reverse is true. There are lots of objective and documented evidence to the bias against Palestinians.
Great analysis with statistical data is found at [http://ifamericansknew.org]
Buying the War on Palestinians: The US Media, The New York Times and Israel by Patrick O’Connor [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=12742]
Video [http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/goldberg.html]
American Media Miss the boat: For USA Today Freedom of the Press Means the Right to Report It Wrong” [http://ifamericansknew.org/media/misslib.html]
[http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=262&aid=530&pg=1]
Article on Israel-centric media folks pushing teh war on Iraq with an appendix compiled by Jewish American writer on list of Zionist Jews in the media [http://desip.igc.org/ConvergingAgendas.html]
61. Boycotts and Divestment are immoral and anti-Semitic
– Visit [Boycotts and Divestment] for compilations of websites and information
62. Zionism represent Jews or at least mainstream Judaism
– There are literally hundreds of books on the subject of Jewish Anti-Zionism. A Statement to the 1919 Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews (including one Congressman): “We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” … As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a “promised land” for the Jews may become a “land of promise” for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope. We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State
Quoted in Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections, (New York: Amana Books, 1988). [http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionopp01.html]
63. Arabs oppress women
– The forgotten “-ism”: An Arab American Women’s perspective on Zionism, Racism, and Sexism [http://www.awsa.net/forgottenism.pdf]
64. Zionsits have been honest (Many more lies uncovered)
– Israel’s surprising best seller contradicts founding ideology, Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2008
[http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9884.shtml]
– Book refuting Jewish taboo on Israel’s bestseller list[http://thenational.ae/article/20081006/FOREIGN/279853798]
– 12 Conventional lies by Uri Avnery [http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story658.html]
– The fake Lebanese
– Zionist Rabbi fakes his own stabbing
– Delusional fabrication: Propaganda tools of Israel and American Zionists By Paul J. Balles
-The many false flag operations from the Lavon Affairs to assasinations of faction leaders blaming it on other leaders.
-‘Undercover Israeli combatants threw stones at IDF soldiers in West Bank’: Testimony by commander of the Israeli Prison Service’s elite ‘Masada’ unit sheds light on IDF methods in countering demonstrations against barrier. By Chaim Levinson
– French women sentenced for faking anti-Semitic attack
“The IDF acknowledged Friday that Israeli gunfire was responsible for the wounding of the American photographer shot last week in Bethlehem. Yola Monakhov, 26, was on assignment for The Associated Press last Saturday when she was shot in the abdomen. She suffered extensive internal injuries and fractures to the pelvis … Previously, the army said it had no evidence of a journalist being shot that afternoon. An army spokesman, Yarden Vatikay, had said a soldier fired only one live round very accurately at the leg of a Palestinian man. The army also had suggested that Monakhov may have been shot by a Palestinian bullet.” Associated Press November 17, 2000
– “The (Israeli military psychological warfare) unit’s activities have been controversial for years. In October 1999, Aluf Benn revealed in Haaretz that members of the unit used the Israeli media to emphasize reports initiated by the unit that it managed to place in the Arab press. He reported that the news reports focused on Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in terror activity. Psychological warfare officers were in touch with Israeli journalists covering the Arab world, gave them translated articles from Arab papers (which were planted by the IDF) and pressed the Israeli reporters to publish the same news here.” IDF reviving psychological warfare unit, Haaretz 1/25/05 [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/531712.html]
– Mossad Exposed in Phony Palestinian Al-Qaeda’ Caper
– Israeli torture specialist telling lies
– In an article in USA Today titled “Let our kids alone, Arafat told,” Matthew Kalman reported (December 8, 2000) that “In a rare letter of protest sent this week to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian women’s group demanded that the Palestinian Authority stop using children as cannon fodder.” He goes on to state that this group is a Women Union in Tulkarem.” I took the liberty to investigate this outrageous claim and the messages I got so far from Women Associations in the West Bank in general and Tulkarm in specific showed no evidence for his claim.(contacts Suheir Azzouni watcorg@palnet.com and gupw@palnet.com (letter of Dec 19, 2000)
– “The Secretary-General has reviewed the report by the Investigation Team from the Secretariat which has inquired into the Israeli allegations against UNRWA personnel. The Secretary-General takes note of the Team’s conclusion that the allegation that a rocket was loaded into an UNRWA ambulance was unjustified as the object, in fact, was a folding stretcher of the type carried as normal equipment in UNRWA ambulances. He also takes note that, following the Team’s visit, the Government of Israel has admitted that it wrongly identified the stretcher as a Qassam Rocket and has publicly withdrawn the allegations.” SECRETARY-GENERAL NOTES ISRAEL’S WITHDRAWAL OF ROCKET ALLEGATION AGAINST UNRWA Report, UN News, 27 October 2004
– Darfur used for Israeli PR efforts [http://ww4report.com/node/2582]
– Israel use of “targeted killing” is defended by Israeli spokesperson but is extrajudicial executions that are illegal under international law (see reposrts by Human rights organizations like Amnesty, Human Righst Watch etc)65. Palestinian law implements a death penalty on anyone who sells lands to Jews.We are a people under occupation and remain so. The Palestinian authority does not legislate anything that is contrary to Israeli wishes because they do not have that kind of authority (read Oslo I and Oslo II accords). The Palestinian authority does recognize Jordanian laws operating in this area before and after 1967. This is because International law says that laws cannot be changed by an occupier (in this case Israel) and Israel indeed could not change any of the operating Jordanian laws. Of course they did selective enforcement of these laws. There happens to be a Jordanian law of 1973 which proscribes selling lands to the enemy as treason because such lands would be used as bases for infiltration. The enemy is Israel not Jews. For example native Samaritans bought and sold lands in Nablus area in the West Bank from/to fellow Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) before and after 1967 and before and after this law of 1973. Selling to Jews is not the same as selling to the enemy. Imagine what would happen in the US if a US citizen sold a track of land in 1942 to non US citizens who are citizens and supporters of the Third Reich. Treason is treason. The Jordanian law that proscribes selling land to the enemy (Being Israel is an enemy) is posted here http://www.lob.gov.jo/ui/laws/search_no.jsp?no=30&year=1973
And it does not mention death penalty but does mention treason (which I guess can carry death penalties in most countries depending on severity of treason)I myself am against the death penalty but the US has death penalty including for for severe acts of treason and it was carried out fairly frequently. Nearly half the countries on earth still do. To my knowledge no Palestinian was executed under this Jordanian law (one from Hebron who was buying lands from fellow Palestinians and selling it systematically to Zionists was convicted under the law but to my knowledge he was not executed). Now you have to realize that Israel is a colonial state built by theft from Palestinians. Only a very tiny fraction of the 93% of the land of Palestine (less than 2%) was actually purchased from Palestinians (and no they were not executed). Most of the land now under control by the Jewish National Fund and Israel Land Authority and most of the private lands controlled by Jewish Israelis was acquired via the usual colonial methods (there are about 101 such ways other than a willing commercial transaction). Finally, International law says the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza are occupied territories subject to the fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its population to the occupied lands. Such violations of International law are considered crimes against humanity. So even if a Palestinian was willing to sell knowingly to a colonial occupier, both the buyer and the seller are engaged in crimes against humanity. BTW, colonized people in the past all behaved the same in that most of them condemned treason and some of them did engage in treason (Algerians, South Africans, Vietnamese, Native Americans etc).As for “Sharia law” (and most common law), I do not know what this person is talking about or its relevance here. If you injure someone you should compensate them for the injury. When you kill someone, you do not only pay money. If you steal something and still have it, restitution means return of stolen property (plus punishment per common law). In the case of Palestinian property taken from them, there is basic International law (applicable to inhabitants and their descendants of the 534 Palestinian towns and villages that were destroyed and ethnically cleansed in the process of creating a “Jewish state” in Palestine).For the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands (a totally unrelated subject), see http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter4/-For other issues on lands etc, see http://qumsiyeh.org/liesandtruths/
Finally I do feel these issues are mostly distractions from the core issues such as role of Zionism among Jews, tribalism, racism, colonialism etc. Those are the issues that should be discussed. I suggest that Ron read books like those by Jewish theologian Marc Ellis and Jewish intellectual Mark Braverman instead of trying to reiterate typical (and long discredited) Zionist talking points… We are 12 million Palestinians, 7 million of us are refugees or displaced people. Trying to vilify the victims with red herrings just does not work in the 21st century (unfortunately it partially worked in 16-18th century North America).
66. We left Gaza only to continue to be attacked
“The Gaza Bombshell”, by David Rose in “Vanity Fair”, APRIL 2008
SYNOPSIS: “After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever”
[http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804]
“In what may be part of a systematic effort by Israeli internal security forces to use journalism as a cover for intelligence-gathering, agents from Israel’s General Security Services, also known as the Shin Bet, impersonated a veteran Israeli television news correspondent.”
Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 1997
“I have always said that if the deepest and profoundest hope symbolizing redemption is the re-building of the Jewish Temple . . . then it is obvious that those mosques (al-Haram al-Sharif and al-Aqsa) will have, one way or another, to disappear one of these days . . . Had it not been for Deir Yasin – half a million Arabs would be living in the state of lsrael. The state of Israel would not have existed. We must not disregard this, with full awareness of the responsibility involved. All wars are cruel. There is no way out of that. This country will either be Eretz Israel with an absolute Jewish majority and a small Arab minority, or Eretz Ishmael, and Jewish emigration will begin again if we do not expel the Arabs one way or another”. (Israel Eldad (Scheib), leader of LEHI terror group with Shamir. ‘On the Spirit That Was Revealed in the People’, De’ot, Winter 1968; as quoted in Davis and Mezvinsky (eds.) Documents from Israel (1967-1973, pp.l86-7).
Besides the lies, there is what is not permitted to be told. Facts long suppressed
Huntleigh USA that oversaw security at Newark and Boston airports during 9/11/01 is a wholly-owned subsidiary of an Israeli company called International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS) International N.V., a Netherlands-based aviation and transportation security firm headed by Israelis.
Other lies (we will collect documents on these in due time)
Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006 because Arabs were holding Israeli soldiers captive. These soldiers had never strayed onto Lebanese territory.
There is no partner for peace
Arab League proposal)
Israel accepted partition plan
Israel didn’t accept the partition plan/ they violated it immediately)
Palestinian Muslims are responsible for any measurable decrease in the Christian population of the occupied areas
For additional information, visit:
Silwan Information Center http://silwanic.net/
Civil Coalition for Defending the Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem http://www.ccdprj.ps
Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center http://www.mosaada.org/
Ben-Yehuda, Nachman, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Myth-
making in Israel (U of Wisconsin, 1995)
Fox, Edward, Palestine Twilight: The Murder of Dr. Albert Glock and the
Archaeology of the Holy Land (Harper Collins, 2001)
Gottwald, Norman, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, 1979)
A review of the film by Yotam Feldman “The Lab” which discusses how Israel tests weapons on us the Palestinians so that they can make billions selling these weapons to other oppressors. Palestinians as Laboratory Guinea Pigs
Former American President Jimmy Carter has warned the US Secretary of State John Kerry of violating international law in his potential peace framework agreement between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation.
He also expressed his concerns about the remarks of Kerry’s senior aides Martin Indyk, which were delivered before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Jewish groups.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s official news agency Wafa said Carter had shown the letter he sent to Kerry to the PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The letter included efforts to save the peace process and stressed on reaching an agreement to be accepted by the two sides.
According to Wafa, Carter warned of formulating an agreement which “in any form, breaches international law and the reinforced international precedents regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which have been accepted since 1967.”
Carter reiterated the necessity to abide by UN resolution 242, which was accepted by the former Israeli PM Menachem Begin as part of the Camp David peace accords and supported by the Quartet, Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
The sponsor of the first peace treaty between Israel and the Arabs said: “Official US proposal to cancel or breach international law will make it impossible for the Palestinians in the Holy Lands, or outside, to accept the framework agreement as a new basis for peace talks.”
“The Israel Project”, a US media advocacy group, has produced a revised training manual to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war, keep their ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that their crimes are necessary and conform to “shared values” between Israel and the civilized West.
It’s a clever document.
The manual teaches how to justify the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the land-grabbing, the cruelty and the blatant disregard for international law and UN resolutions, and make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of the aerosol of persuasive language. It is designed to hoodwink us ignorant and gullible Americans and Europeans into believing that we actually share values with the racist regime in Israel and that its abominable behaviour is therefore deserving of our support.
Israel is hoping for a public relations massacre. The other side – the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization – don’t take communications seriously and have neglected to correct Israeli distortion. They are happy, it seems, for Israel’s one-sided definitions to prevail, which of course makes the task for Israel so much easier. This latest propaganda offensive is potentially the “coup de grace” to finish off the tormented Palestinians. See it here.
And the manual will no doubt serve as a communications primer for the army of cyber-scribblers that Israel’s Ministry of Dirty Tricks is recruiting to spread Zionism’s poison across the internet.
This quote at the beginning sets the tone: “Remember, it’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”
Top priority: demonize Hamas
The manual’s numerous messages are aimed at the mass of “persuadables”, primarily in America but also in the UK. The strategy from the start is to isolate the democratically-elected Hamas and to rob the resistance movement and the Palestinian population of their human rights.
“Clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas. There is an immediate and clear distinction between the empathy Americans feel for the Palestinians and the scorn they direct at Palestinian leadership. Hamas is a terrorist organization – Americans get that already. But if it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support. Right now, many Americans sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, and that sympathy will increase if you fail to differentiate the people from their leaders.”
The plight of the Palestinians under Israel’s heel was an international concern long before Hamas appeared on the scene.
But this is familiar ground. We scorned George Bush and Tony Blair and had to differentiate between them and their respective peoples. We now have to do the same with Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. We are tired of having to make that same differentiation between the Israeli people and the dreadful leaders they produce.
“ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO DEFENSIBLE BORDERS: With more than three years of violent history since Israel’s agreement to withdraw from Gaza and portions of the West Bank [sic], Americans have had time to take stock of the situation and form opinions. The big picture: they believe that Hamas’s leadership of Gaza has made Israel and the region less safe, while some are more receptive to what they perceive as a moderate approach in the West Bank by Mahmoud Abbas. Based on these experiences, they are willing to grant Israel more leeway in resisting calls to give more land for more peace.”
Here we clearly see the motive for demonizing Hamas – Israel wants more leeway to continue its land-grabs and other criminal activities.
“If… If… If… Then”: Put the burden on Hamas to make the first move for peace by using If’s (and don’t forget to finish with a hard then to show Israel is a willing peace partner). “If Hamas reforms… If Hamas recognize our right to exist… If Hamas renounces terrorism… If Hamas supports international peace agreements… then we are willing to make peace today.”
How one-sided and daft can you get? Substitute Israel for Hamas.
Words that work
The manual sets out numerous examples of “words that work” – supposedly.
“We know that the Palestinians deserve leaders who will care about the well being of their people, and who do not simply take hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from America and Europe, put them in Swiss bank accounts, and use them to support terror instead of peace.”
No mention here of the billions of tax dollars Israel takes from the US and spends on munitions to obliterate and vaporize its neighbours.
“Peace can only be made with adversaries who want to make peace with you. Terrorist organizations like Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad are, by definition, opposed to peaceful co-existence, and determined to prevent reconciliation. I ask you, how do you negotiate with those who want you dead?”
Hamas and Hezbollah are only regarded as terrorists by the White House and Tel Aviv and by US-Israeli stooges and flag-wavers in Westminster and elsewhere.
In Executive Order 13224 – “BLOCKING PROPERTY AND PROHIBITING TRANSACTIONS WITH PERSONS WHO COMMIT, THREATEN TO COMMIT, OR SUPPORT TERRORISM” – Bush used this definition: “The term “terrorism” means an activity that –
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended —
(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.”
It describes the antics of the US and Israel perfectly.
“There is NEVER, EVER, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children. NEVER… there is one fundamental principle that all peoples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people do not target innocent women and children for death.”
Quite so. Where does that leave Israel, which recently killed 320 children in Gaza and 773 civilians, including 109 women? From 2000 (the start of the second Intifada – the Palestinian urising against the Israeli occupation) up to the end of last year Israel had slaughtered 4,936 Palestinians in their homeland, including 952 children, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. In the same period Palestinians killed 490 Israelis in Israel including only 84 children. So, Israel’s kill-rate is at least 10 to 1, and rising since the blitzkrieg on Gaza.
Iran-backed or US-backed – take your pick
“Use humility. ‘I know that in trying to defend its children and citizens from terrorists that Israel has accidentally hurt innocent people. I know it, and I’m sorry for it. But what can Israel do to defend itself? If America had given up land for peace – and that land had been used for launching rockets at America, what would America do? Israel was attacked with thousands of rockets from Iran-backed Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. What should Israel have done to protect her children?’”
Palestinians too have a right to defend themselves. Hamas was the popular choice of Palestinians at the last election and is entitled under international law to take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by Iran, so what? Israel is extravagantly funded and supplied by the US. Here’s part of their begging-bowl “Military Aid Speech”:
“Israel makes the request for military assistance out of self-defense. As a democracy, they have the right and the responsibility to protect our borders. As a democracy, they have the right and the responsibility to protect their citizens.
“Israel does not ask for US troops to protect itself. It does not ask for a single American soldier to protect its borders. It only asks for the funds for them to protect themselves. They need the equipment so that their own troops can ensure the safety of their civilian population through this gathering conflict with the enemies of democracy.
“They didn’t ask to have our nation built in range of Iranian missiles. They didn’t ask that their nation be a focal point for religious extremists who have declared war on the West and on democracy.
“But they are, and they need your help.”
And here’s the rationale behind it:
“Americans fundamentally believe that a democracy has a right to protect its people and its borders. And while Americans don’t want to increase foreign aid in a time of significant budgetary deficits and painful spending cuts, there is one and only one argument that will work for Israel (in four easy steps):
(1) As a democracy, Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend its borders and protect its people.
(2) Terrorist groups, including Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas, continue to pose a direct threat to Israeli security and have repeatedly taken innocent Israeli lives.
(3) Israel is America’s one and only true ally in the region. In these particularly unstable and dangerous times, Israel should not be forced to go it alone.
(4) With America’s financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort against the war against terrorism.”
It’s evident that Americans don’t believe in democracy enough to allow Palestinian democracy to flourish.
“When the terror ends, Israel will no longer need to have challenging checkpoints to inspect goods and people. When the terror ends we will no longer need a security fence.”
There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank, so why is the security fence still there – and still being built? Why are the occupation troops still there? Why are hundreds of checkpoints still there? Why is Israel still stealing land, demolishing Palestinian homes and building settlements there?
“Remind people – again and again – that Israel wants peace.
Reason One: If Americans see no hope for peace – if they only see a continuation of a 2,000-year-long episode of “Family Feud” – Americans will not want their government to spend tax dollars or their president’s clout on helping Israel.
Reason Two: The speaker that is perceived as being most for PEACE will win the debate. Every time someone makes the plea for peace, the reaction is positive. If you want to regain the public relations advantage, peace should be at the core of whatever message you wish to convey.”
Israel has never met its peace agreement obligations. It doesn’t want peace – every action is directed at keeping the conflict going until the Israelis have stolen enough land and established enough ‘facts on the ground’ – Jews-only settlements, highways, disconnected Palestinian bantustans – to enable them to redraw the map to suit their expansionist agenda and make the occupation PERMANENT.
Gaza in a vice
“Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process. Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.”
Israel never left. It still occupies Gazan airspace, coastal waters and airwaves, and controls all borders except Rafah where it nevertheless exerts a veto. Israel has Gaza in a vice, which is crushing the tiny enclave’s economy, starving its 1.5 million citizens and creating a huge humanitarian crisis in an attempt to bring the elected government to its knees.
“Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism… The more you focus on the similarities between Israel and America, the more likely you are to win the support of those who are neutral. Indeed, Israel is an important American ally in the war against terrorism, and faces many of the same challenges as America in protecting their citizens.”
Note how Israel’s strategy is almost totally dependent on the false idea that they are victims of terror and Western nations need to huddle together with Israel for mutual protection. Fortunately, level-headed people are beginning to realize who the terrorists really are.
It must be blindingly obvious by now that allowing parallels to be drawn between Israel and America only serves to increase the world’s hatred of America. US citizens need to wake up to this, and British citizens should avoid falling into the same trap.
Inject with “core values” and repeat over and over again…
“The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘security’, and ‘peace’. These four words are at the core of the American political, economic, social and cultural systems, and they should be repeated as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American.”
If so fluent in this language, why doesn’t Israel acknowledge its neighbours’ rights to democracy, freedom, security and peace and end their military oppression?
“A simple rule of thumb is that once you get to the point of repeating the same message over and over again so many times that you think you might get sick – that is just about the time the public will wake up and say ‘Hey – this person just might be saying something interesting to me!’ But don’t confuse messages with facts…”
Never let facts get in the way of a good message!
“How can the current Palestinian leadership honestly say it will pursue peace when previous leaders rejected an offer to create a Palestinian state just a few short years ago and now refuse to live up to their responsibilities as outlined in the Road Map?”
This must be a reference to Ehud Barak’s so-called “generous offer”, another of the myths Israelis love to peddle. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, seized by Israel in 1967 and occupied ever since, comprise just 22 per cent of pre-partition Palestine. When the Palestinians signed the Oslo Agreement in 1993 they agreed to accept the 22 per cent and to recognize Israel within “Green Line” borders (i.e. the 1949 armistice line established after the Arab-Israeli war). Conceding 78 per cent of the land that was originally theirs was an astonishing compromise on the part of the Palestinians.
But it wasn’t enough for greedy Barak. His “generous offer” required the inclusion of 69 Israeli settlements within the 22 per cent remnant. It was plain to see on the map that these settlement blocs created impossible borders and already severely disrupted Palestinian life in the West Bank. Barak also demanded the Palestinian territories be placed under “temporary Israeli control”, meaning Israeli military and administrative control indefinitely. The “generous offer” also gave Israel control over all the border crossings of the new Palestinian state. What nation in the world would accept that? The unacceptable reality of Barak’s offer, contained in the map, was hidden by propaganda spin.
Later, at Taba, Barak produced a revised map but withdrew it after his election defeat. Don’t take my word for it – the facts are well documented and explained by organizations such as Israel’s Gush Shalom.
“Why is the world so silent about the written, vocal, stated aims of Hamas?”
And why is the world so silent about the written, stated aims of the racist regime and its political parties? Read their manifestos.
“Successful communications is not about being able to recite every fact from the long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is about pointing out a few core principles of shared values – such as democracy and freedom – and repeating them over and over again… You need to start with empathy for both sides, remind your audience that Israel wants peace and then repeat the messages of democracy, freedom, and peace over and over again… we need to repeat the message, on average, 10 times to be effective.”
Is democracy a shared value? Israel is an ethnocracy not a democracy. Is freedom a shared value? The world is still waiting for Israel to allow the Palestinians their freedom.
“The situation in the Middle East may be complicated, but all parties should adopt a simple approach: peace first, political boundaries second.”
Renounce resistance while still under Israel’s jackboot? The correct approach is for the international community to insist first that Israel complies with international law and the many UN resolutions it has contemptuously ignored. The boundaries are already defined. Whatever issues remain to be decided, Palestinians should not have to negotiate under occupation or duress.
Rockets, bombs and atrocities: the language of peace
“Bottom line: What will happen if we fail to get the world to care about the fact that Israeli parents in southern Israel need to literally dodge rockets when they drive their children to kindergarten in the morning? What will happen if the world allows Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, to get nuclear weapons? What will Israel do if bad press causes American citizens to ask [their] government to turn its back on Israel? Why do I care so much about the success of your communications efforts? I care because I never want our children to live through what my family and yours lived through in the Holocaust.”
Only one in 500 makeshift Qassam rockets causes a fatality, small beer compared to the devastation and carnage resulting from Israel’s state-of-the-art rocketry targeted on Gaza. How does it look when Palestinians are forced to pay the price for the Holocaust? And how much does Israel care about the Palestinian holocaust it has caused?
The manual then gives a long glossary of terms. Here’s a sample:
“Deliberately firing rockets into civilian communities”: Combine terrorist motive with civilian visuals and you have the perfect illustration of what Israel faced in Gaza and Lebanon. Especially with regard to rocket attacks but useful for any kind of terrorist attack, deliberate is the right word to use to call out the intent behind the attacks. This is far more powerful than describing the attacks as “random”.
Israelis know all about bombarding civilian targets. And they are careful not to mention that Sderot, until recently the only Israeli township within range of Gazan rockets, is built on the ruins of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village whose inhabitants were forced from their homes by Jewish terrorists.
“Economic Diplomacy”: This is a much more embracing and popular term than the current lexicon of “sanctions”. It has appeal across the political spectrum: the tough economic approach appeals to Republicans, and the diplomacy component satisfies Democrats.
We can all play this game. Israel is now beginning to suffer “economic diplomacy” in the form of worldwide boycotts.
“Economic Prosperity”: Whenever Israel talks about the “economic prosperity” of the Palestinians, it puts Israel in the most positive light possible. After all, who can disagree?
What sort of prosperity is it when nothing can be imported or exported without Israel’s approval and fisherman can’t even put to sea in their own waters without having their boats shot up by the Israeli navy?
“Human to Human”: “We know that the average Palestinian and the average Israeli want to come together and make peace. They want to live in peace. Israeli leaders have come together with Arab leaders to make peace in the past. But how do you make peace with Hamas and Hezbollah?”
Simple. You get off their land and stay off. There can be no peace under occupation. You have to be very stupid not to understand that.
“Humanize Rockets”: Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.
Would Israel care to tell the world how many bombs, rockets and shells (including the illegal and prohibited variety) its US-supplied F-16s, tanks, armed drones and navy gunboats have poured into the densely-packed humanity that is Gaza?
Still more advice…
“Living together, side by side”. This is the best way to describe the ultimate vision of a two-state solution without using the phrase.
Sounds cute but is worn out. Who would want to live alongside bigots and extremists who have made your life a misery for 61 years?
“When talking about a Palestinian partner, it is essential to distinguish between Hamas and everyone else. Only the most anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian American expects Israel to negotiate with Hamas, so you have to be clear that you are seeking a ‘moderate Palestinian partner’.”
Where are the moderate Israeli partners?
“The fight is over IDEOLOGY – not land; terror, not territory. Thus, you must avoid using Israel’s religious claims to land as a reason why Israel should not give up land. Such claims only make Israel look extremist to people who are not religious Christians or Jews.”
If the fight isn’t about land, why did Israel steal it at gunpoint? And why won’t they give it back when told to by the UN?
“Think PRO-PALESTINIAN. While I have spoken about Israeli casualties, I want to recognize those Palestinians that have been killed or wounded, because they are suffering as well. I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.”
Israel won’t even allow cement into Gaza to build the graves.
“And so I say to my Palestinian colleagues … you can stop the bloodshed. You can stop the suicide bombings and rocket attacks. If you really want to, you can put an end to this cycle of violence. If you won’t do it for our children, do it for your children.”
Effective Israeli sound bite. Speechless.
“I want to see a future where the Palestinians govern themselves. Israel does not want to govern a single Palestinian. Not one. We want them to govern themselves. We want them to have complete self-determination.”
Is that why Israel tried to snuff out Palestine’s democracy – and the people’s right to self-determination – immediately after the 2006 elections?
“The big picture approach is this: You must isolate Hamas as:
– A critical cause of the delay in achieving a two-state solution
– The biggest source of harm to the Palestinian people, and
– The reason why Israel must defend its people from living in terror.
Read from the Hamas Charter. Now, here’s how to attack Hamas: indict them with their own indoctrination materials. Yes, people know Hamas is a terrorist organization – but they don’t know just how terrifying Hamas can be. The absolute best way to heighten their awareness is to read from the Hamas Charter itself. Don’t just “quote” from it. Read it. Out loud. Again and again. Hand it out to everyone.”
At last Israel makes a good point. After three years of “government” Hamas must be mad to persist with its ill-advised charter. They have been severely tested. They have matured. They have earned credibility in many eyes. Israel’s behaviour makes Hamas look good. But all that will count for nothing if they don’t rewrite their charter as a matter of urgency.
Regev’s pearls of wisdom. But how safe is the region under the threat of Israel’s nukes?
“It’s not just Israel who refuses to speak to Hamas. It’s the whole international community… Most of the democratic world refuses to have a relationship with Hamas because Hamas has refused to meet the most minimal benchmarks of international behaviour.”– Mark Regev
Isn’t that a little cheeky, Mr Regev, coming from a regime widely condemned for war crimes, piracy and mega-lawlessness?
“It was the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Anan, that put four benchmarks on the table. And he said, speaking for the international community…
That if Hamas reforms itself …
If Hamas recognizes my country’s right to live in freedom…
If Hamas renounces terrorism against innocent civilians…
If Hamas supports international agreements that are being signed and agreed to concerning the peace process… then the door is open. But unfortunately – tragically – Hamas has failed to meet even one of those four benchmarks. And that’s why today Hamas is isolated internationally. Even the United Nations refuses to speak to Hamas. – Mark Regev
Which of those benchmarks has Israel met, Mr Regev?
“Israel is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear programme. And for good reason. Iran’s president openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. We see them racing ahead on nuclear enrichment so they can have enough fissile material to build a bomb. We see them working on their ballistic missiles. We only saw, last week, shooting a rocket to launch a so-called satellite into outer space and so forth. The Iranian nuclear programme is a threat, not just to my country, but to the entire region. And it’s incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to keep from proliferating.” – Mark Regev
Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr Regev? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat? Would you also like to comment on why Israel hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and why it has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention? What proof do you have of Iran’s nuclear weapons plans?
And why do you persist in misquoting Mr Ahmadinejad?
The Holy City is not up for grabs
“The toughest issue to communicate will be the final resolution of Jerusalem. Americans overwhelmingly want Israel to be in charge of the religious holy sites and are frankly afraid of the consequences should Israel turn over control to the Palestinians. Consider:
– 71 per cent of Americans trust Israel most to protect the holy sites in Jerusalem, compared to 6.1 per cent who trust the Palestinian authority most. 8.5 per cent per cent trust neither.
– 54 per cent of Americans believe that ‘Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty’ while just 23.9 per cent believe that ‘Jerusalem should be divided into Israeli controlled and Palestinian controlled areas’.
Given the choice between the two, Americans of all political and demographic stripes trust Israel to protect and have sovereignty over Jerusalem.”
Israel is in control right now and prevents Muslims and Christians from outside the city visiting the holy places. No way can Israel be trusted. The UN’s partition plan decreed that Jerusalem should become a ”corpus separatum” under international management. It is unlikely that the UN would wish to see its resolutions torn up or international law rewritten for Israel’s sole benefit, regardless of America’s misinformed opinion.
Get the name-calling right
I’ll close with the following extract:
“Many on the left see an ‘Israel vs. Palestinian’ crisis where Israel is Goliath and the Palestinians are David. It is critical that they understand that this is an Arab-Israeli crisis and that the force undermining peace is Iran and their proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. You must not call Hamas just Hamas. Call them what they are: Iran-backed Hamas. Indeed, when they know that Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah, they are much more supportive of Israel.”
By the same token we must call the racist regime what it is – US-backed Israel.
Iran’s support for Hamas is difficult to quantify and probably less than we think. More funding has probably come from Sunni Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In any case, it is peanuts compared to America’s support for Israel.
Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and was founded in 1987 during the first Intifada. Hezbollah came into being in 1982 in response to US-backed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. So, the territorial ambitions of US-backed Israel provoked the rise of both. Israel’s problem is entirely self-inflicted and shouldn’t concern the rest of us.
Hamas’s election manifesto in 2006 called for maintaining the armed struggle against US-backed Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which seems a perfectly valid aim.
Our obligation to respect and promote human rights
The Israel Project’s training manual is an unpleasant piece of work. It runs to 116 pages and I have only scratched the surface. It recycles many of the discredited techniques used by the advertising industry before standards of honesty, decency and truthfulness were brought in to protect the public.
And it serves to undermine with clever words the inalienable rights pledged by the UN and the world’s civilized nations to all peoples, including the Palestinians.
When you have to stoop this low you simply don’t have a case.
The Palestinian side urgently needs to strip away the deception and re-frame the Holy Land situation in truthful language. And it needs to debunk this Zionist handbook. If the PA and the PLO won’t do it, who will?
Everyone should bear in mind the following, written nearly 61 years ago:
“Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.”
It would seem that Israel has not read or understood the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which all nations signed up to. Attempts to wipe out the rights of people who happen to be in the way of the Zionist vision of a “Greater Israel” deserve no support whatever.
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Illinois statement of support for Iymen Chehade, a professor at Chicago’s Columbia College, marks the latest, and most significant, step forward in the fight against pervasive attempts to control discourse on Occupied Palestine, via stifling academic freedom on college and university campuses.
Chehade, employed by Columbia since 2007, has taught three different courses on the Middle East, but by far most popular has been his Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a course he designed in 2010.
“The class is popular on campus. Students hear about it from other students and try consistently enroll in it,” says Chehade. “Its one of those history classes that is not history, it’s actually present, its also future. As we are speaking, history is being made.”
Considerable student demand for the course led to Chehade’s teaching three sections of it at one point. As of fall 2013, Columbia offered Chehade two sections to his Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
As part of his course content in fall 2013, Chehade showed his students the award-winning documentary 5 Broken Cameras.
“The film itself is about the occupation of the village of Bil’in, the occupation of Palestine. My objective in showing the film was to humanize the issue,” says Chehade. “Student reaction was very positive.”
In spite of student demand for the course and student interest in the documentary, not long after showing it in his class, one of Chehade’s two spring 2014 sections was canceled.
“I received an email from the Chair’s office saying that they wanted to speak to me about an issue. Before going his office, I checked my mailbox and saw I’d been assigned two sections of the course for spring 2014.”
At Chair Steven Corey’s office, Chehade was told a student had complained of “bias” in his class. The student’s identity was not revealed, nor was Chehade able to discuss the allegation with the student. Corey instructed Chehade to be “more balanced” in his class, and asked him to produce his teaching qualifications, a request Chehade says is not in itself unusual. “But in the context of the situation, that makes it alarming.”
The week following the meeting with Corey, Chehade’s two sections were posted for Columbia’s spring 2014 offerings. Yet, within a couple of hours, one section of the course was eliminated, in violation of his contract with Columbia.
Chehade took the matter to the union, who brought the cancellation up with administration. “So they gave me another class,” says Chehade. “The class was The Middle East Up To Mohammad, which is 1400 years ago, 1300 hundred years removed from when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began.”
According to Academic Vice President and Provost Louise Love, the college supported Chehade’s showing of the film, which she lauded as “widely acclaimed” and noted provided “an important perspective.” However, in her statement, she went on to note that the elimination of sections “reflect a multitude of factors such as overall student enrollment, targets for average class size.”
“If their objective was to reduce classes, and increase class sizes, why did they give me a different class?” asks Chehade. “Whether they like the film or not is not the issue. Eliminating the opportunity for a professor to teach his perspective is the issue here. That’s exactly what they did.”
Since the sudden cancellation of his section, support has grown rapidly for the professor and for the larger issue of academic freedom. Chehade and the AAUP Illinois Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure maintain that the cancellation was an act of academic stifling.
“We have over 6000 signatures on our petition for academic freedom,” says Chehade. Signatories include supporters from around the world, as well as Columbia faculty, current and former students, and academics nation-wide. “Many people have volunteered their time on this campaign. Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace at Columbia College have been very active in bringing this issue to light.”
Regarding the cancellation, one former student, Alex Quiroz, notes: “I took this class knowing absolutely nothing about the conflict. Professor Chehade explained everything in a balanced and honest way. It would not be fair to other students who want to take this class.”
Noting the impact of pro-Israeli lobby efforts on college and university campuses nation-wide, Jewish-American Peter Cohen, signs “I find it unacceptable that a small, extremist and highly moneyed lobby that claims to represent my interests be allowed stifle legitimate voices and opinions in academia.”
Love, herself, has been at the heart of prior incidents repressing academics. Notably, in 2006, as the associate provost at Roosevelt university, Love supported Susan Weininger (then Chair of the Department of History, Art History, and Philosophy) in her firing of World Religions professor Douglas Giles.
“Weininger was upset with him over for allowing his students to have this open forum,” says Chedhade, noting that it has been publicly documented that Weininger said to Giles, “What disturbs me is that you act like Palestinians have a side in this. They don’t have a side…they are animals…they are not civilized.”
Love in turn defended Weininger as “passionately defending” her position, Chehade notes.
“Imagine if she said that about an African-American or if she said that about a Jew? She would be fired. She should not be let within 1000 feet of an academic institution. Racism is racism. What type of message us Columbia College sending when you have this supporter of racism as one of the main heads of this institution?”
For Chehade, a Palestinian-American, Weininger’s comment and Love’s defense of her position is extremely insulting.
“I was sitting in front of this woman who I was grieving my issue to, knowing that she supported someone who said this about Palestinians. Columbia College should not have hired her. ”
In its letter to Louise Love, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Illinois first cites the Columbia College Collective Bargaining Agreement, which includes prohibiting “explicit or implicit threat of termination or discipline for the purpose of constraining a faculty member in the exercise of his or her rights under such principles of Academic Freedom. [CBA art. V (1), (2).”
Highlighting the standard norm of dealing with student complaints, the AAUP statement notes that the alleged complaint against Chehade “trespassed on the academic freedom of a professor and should have been referred back to the instructor for resolution.” Critically, the statement notes that “neither Dr. Steven Corey, the chairperson of the Department of Humanities, History and Social Science nor School of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Deborah Holdstein directed the student to take the complaint to the instructor,” calling their actions “a violation of widely accepted norms of academic due process.”
According to the AAUP, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is “not easy pedagogy because of the passions it arouses among disparate groups in the United States….It is beyond dispute that the film 5 Broken Cameras was directly related to the course topic.”
In response to Chair Corey’s admonition to Chehade that he be “balanced,” and Provost Love’s questioning Chehade whether he presented his material in a “balanced” manner, the AAUP notes that the issue of “balance is “frequently used to reign in a professor from critical thinking…towards a consensus approach that is more acceptable to elite or mainstream opinion.”
Similarly, for Chehade, the term “balance” is a loaded term. “When it is applied to the academic context, and specifically to the context of teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is extremely problematic. This is an issue that lacks balance. It’s an asymmetrical issue: there are a people that are occupied,millions who have no civil rights. As a professor in a college, how do you present that as “balanced”? It would be like presenting the African-American struggle for liberation from the Jim Crow laws in the South as a“balanced” issue, where you have African Americans who are trying to gain rights, and you have white, southern oppressors who have institutionalized and systemized laws that violate their rights. How do you present that as “balanced”? If somebody asked that from an African American professor, who presents the African-American struggle for liberation, it would be ludicrous.”
In the detailed account of the cancellation of one of Chehade’s sections, the AAUP Illinois finishes its statement by noting that the six days between Chehade’s meeting with Corey, and the subsequent removal of the second section are “linked events.” Notably, the AAUP reiterates “we conclude that Professor Chehade’s academic freedom was violated as a result.”
In line with Chehade’s own expectations, the AAUP asks that Columbia College reinstate both sections of Chehade’s popular Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in fall 2014. They also emphasize the need for a “strategic reassessment” of Columbia’s policy of handling student complaints, noting that at present the system for doing so is “clearly broken and conducive to academic freedom violations.”
Chehade, who wants to ensure that other professors who speak about Palestine in a fact-based manner are not stifled, applauds the AAUP statement.
“I would like to thank the AAUP for their conclusion. Discussing the Occupation of Palestine is not an exception to the rule of Academic Freedom at Columbia College or any college campus in the United States.”
RAMALLAH (AFP) — Israel has told the PLO it will not free the final group of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said on Friday.
Under the deal which relaunched the talks in July, Israel said it would release 104 Palestinians held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims at the United Nations.
Israel has so far freed 78 prisoners in three batches but cabinet members had warned they would block the final release, anticipated for the end of March, if the Palestinians refused to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.
“The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide with its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday 29,” Jibril Rajub told AFP.
“Israel has refused to commit to the names that were agreed upon of prisoners held by Israel since before the 1993 Oslo agreements,” Rajub said.
Israeli officials had no immediate comment.
But Israeli ministers have said previously that the prisoner releases were always conditional on progress in the talks, which had failed to materialize.
Many also baulked at the inclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel among the prisoners slated for release.
Rajub called the Israeli move a “slap in the face of the US administration and its efforts,” and said the Palestinians would resume their international diplomatic offensive.
“Not releasing the prisoners will mark the beginning of the efforts in the international community to challenge the legality of the occupation,” he said.
The talks have been teetering on the brink of collapse, with Washington fighting an uphill battle to get the two sides to agree to a framework for continued negotiations until the end of the year.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Wednesday in a bid to salvage the talks, with US special envoy Martin Indyk meeting the Palestinian leader in Ramallah on Thursday.
Israel’s government has announced the construction of thousands of settler housing units and its army has killed 60 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the talks began.
The Israeli government has also insisted that it maintain a military and civilian presence in the occupied Jordan Valley, which forms around a third of the West Bank, and has insisted that the PLO recognize it as a “Jewish state,” despite having already officially recognized Israel decades earlier.
Attempt by settlers to begin construction of walking path on Tel Rumeida. The blue fence is on the
settlement, and the new stake on right is in a washed out area that would link the settler path to
an existing path along the outside of the fence surrounding the settler archaeological dig.
On 24 March 2014, settlers attempted to begin construction of a walking path outside the fenced “archaeological” dig near the Abu Haikal home on Tel Rumeida. The settlers pounded in metal stakes in an area just below the fence erected by Israelis around what was once the orchard of the Abu Haikal family, and is now an archaeological site to which Palestinians, including Palestinian archaeological experts, are denied access. The stakes are a first step in an apparent attempt to link the settlement of Tel Rumeida to the fenced area of the archaeological dig.
Palestinians living in the building adjacent to the land on which the settlers were trespassing called the police, who ordered the settlers to stop. However, the following day, 25 March, soldiers arrived at the home of the Abu Haikal family and threatened them with arrest.
Feryal Abu Haikal had just finished hosting a group of neighbors, along with the Palestinian Liaison Officer and an officer from the Hebron Governor’s office, when soldiers arrived at her home and began to dispute the ownership of some of the land on Tel Rumeida, showing her a map that contained false information. The soldiers told Feryal Abu Haikal that no visitors are allowed on the land surrounding her home, and threatened to arrest and deport any internationals there, including members of the Abu Haikal family.
For background on the settler archaeological dig on Tel Rumeida click here
To see a map of multiple land-grab efforts by settlers in Hebron click here.
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Wednesday prevented Palestinian human rights organizations in Jerusalem from holding a conference in opposition to Arab enlistment in the Israeli military, organizers said.
Israeli special forces and police reportedly stormed the headquarters of the Yabous Cultural Center immediately prior to the beginning of the conference and shut down the building until the evening.
Organizers said that the police hung a notice signed by the chief of police banning the proceedings from moving forward because the conference was organized by activists associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Israeli authorities consider a terrorist organization.
Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center director Rami Saleh denied the allegations, noting that the conference was organized by JLAC, St. Yves, Kanaan Project, and in cooperation with the Baladna organization’s Haifa branch.
Saleh said the conference aims to raise awareness in the Arab community of Jerusalem about “civil service,” a form of service in the Israeli army that the Israeli state has increasingly enjoined Arab youth to enlist in.
The conference was intended to encourage opposition to “civil service” and all kinds of military service in the Israeli army, which is not mandatory for Muslim and Christian Palestinians in Israel, unlike for Druze and Jewish Israelis.
Dozens of Jerusalem youths aged 18-21 had joined the program, Saleh said.
Yabous institute director Rania Elias condemned the closure of the institute from 2-8 p.m, adding that the institute will continue to provide service and organize events for Palestinian organizations.
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent.
A dust storm originating in the Sahara Desert swept across parts of Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland last month. In addition to bringing a red tinge to the sky, the dust caused a slight, yet noticeable, spike in radiation in the areas it reached. This radiation spike was caused by the presence of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear weapons. A legacy of French nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Algeria during the 1960s, the cesium-137 contamination is a reminder that while the testing of nuclear weapons may have been halted for the time being, the consequences of these tests live on through the poisoning of the planet mankind calls home.
The Saharan radioactive dust cloud is but the most recent visible phenomenon of a plague that has infected much of the world. … continue
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