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Israel agrees to free 26 Palestinian prisoners

Press TV – October 27, 2013

Israel has agreed to free 26 Palestinian prisoners under the terms of the renewed so-called peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

“The release of 26 prisoners has been validated this evening,” said a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday.

Israeli prison authorities say the inmates will be released at least 48 hours after their names are published.

Tel Aviv had said 104 Palestinians would be freed in stages following the start of negotiations on July 30.

More than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge or trial.

An Israeli official claimed last week that the move was linked to a deal with the Palestinian Authority in exchange for continued settlement construction in the occupied territories. But the Palestinian Authority has vehemently denied the allegation, saying the construction activities seriously threaten the talks, that resumed in July after a three-year halt.

Earlier this month, a large number of Palestinians from different political movements took to the streets of the West Bank city of Ramallah to call on the Palestinian Authority to pull out from the talks with Israel.

Supporters of all Palestinian factions, including the Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, gathered in central Arafat square to protest against the talks.

The protesters said the talks are useless and acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas must withdraw from the negotiations. They also demanded the Palestinian Authority take the regime in Tel Aviv to the International Criminal Court for its crimes against the people of Palestine.

Israel has recently announced plans to build about 3,000 more illegal settlement units on the occupied Palestinian land.

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

October 27, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE U.S. AND ISRAEL’S ‘OBSESSION’ WITH IRAN – THE REAL REASONS

By Damian Lataan | November 6, 2011

Actually, it’s not so much that the U.S. and Israel are seemingly ‘obsessed’ with Iran, but more that the neoconservative’s of the U.S. and Israel’s right-wing Zionists are. However, this apparent obsession is only a deliberately created illusion. Israel’s real obsession is the creation of a Greater Israel and the destruction of those that prevent Israel’s expansionist dreams; Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of whom are supported by Iran.

The stated casus belli for any Israeli/US attack on Iran will be that Iran is building a nuclear weapon with which it intends to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. The ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and the ‘wipe Israel off the map’ are two memes that have gone hand in hand in the propaganda and rhetoric of Israel’s Zionists and their neoconservative allies in the US and, indeed, around the world for years.

There are, however, a range of problems with these allegations. Firstly, there is, despite the constant barrage of assertions to the contrary, no actual physical evidence whatsoever that Iran actually has a ‘nuclear weapons program’. Time and time again, Israel and their allies have made the accusations but have never been able to support their allegations with any hard irrefutable evidence. All of the ‘evidence’ so far has been either vaguely circumstantial, hearsay based on statements from dissidents and defectors, straight out lies or simply conclusions based on wishful thinking and vivid imaginations.

Secondly, the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ meme is a deliberate mistranslation of a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said nothing of the sort. It was the neoconservative organisation MEMRI that was responsible for the deliberate mistranslation of the ‘wipe Israel of the map’ line which has been used extensively by neoconservatives and Israelis ever since to invoke hatred of Iran and to infer an existential threat against Israel from Iran. Still, though, Israel and the US insist that Iran is intent on producing a nuclear weapon that it plans to use against Israel and possibly even against America.

Which brings us to the third problem with the allegations ranged against Iran and that is; why would Iran, even if it did have a nuclear weapon, risk utter and swift destruction by US and Israeli retaliatory nuclear strikes if it were to ever attack Israel with a nuclear weapon? The answer, of course is; it wouldn’t – and the Israelis and the US are well aware of it. They are also well aware that in reality Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

So why then all the fuss? The hope is that with the aid of a compliant Western mainstream media, the propaganda memes of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ repeated over and over endlessly will eventually so influence public opinion that it will support an attack against Iran.

The ‘Iranian problem’ is presented to the world via the mainstream media in its most simplistic form. It runs thus: ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program with which it wishes to wipe Israel off the map so the answer is to destroy its weapons making capabilities using military action’.

That’s the rhetoric and the propaganda.

The reality is this: Israel and the US have no real interest in Iran’s nuclear program; their real aim as far as Iran is concerned is to destroy the Islamic regime and replace it with one that is US and Israel friendly.

Attacking Iran and affecting regime change kills a number of birds with one stone. It puts an end to what Israel and the US regard as Iran’s influence in the region, but, most important as far as the Israelis and their supporters are concerned, is that an attack against Iran provides, so they hope the world will believe, a legitimate pretext for attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon on the basis that the Israelis are pre-empting a strike by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel in retaliation of Israel’s attack against Iran.

Since the only way the US and Israel will be able to affect ‘regime change’ in Iran without the use of an invasion and occupation – unthinkable considering that Iran is more than three and a half times the size of Iraq and has about two and a half times the population – is by bombing it into capitulation and surrender, one can expect a campaign that will be far more than a load of bunker-buster bombs aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Much more likely is a campaign of significant attacks against Iran’s defence and governmental institutions as well as its nuclear facilities; attacks that will deliberately inflict significant ‘colateral damage’ on civilians as the Iranian authorities get accused of using their civilians as ‘human shields’. The hope always with this strategy is that the civilian population will then press their government to end the war by capitulating to their enemies demands.

The only problem with this strategy is that it rarely ever works. Usually when such all-out bombing campaigns are carried out with the view to getting the enemy to sue for peace, rather than suing for peace, a phenomenon known as ‘Kriegssozialismus’ sets in whereby people from all walks of civilian life spontaneously ignore their ordinary class affiliations and come together to help each other out in circumstances where all are suffering equally due to war, and, importantly, collectively stiffen their resolve to resist the enemies actions rather than cave into them. Short of using nuclear weapons to defeat Iran, the US and Israel stand no hope of defeating the people of Iran.

There is also a problem of logistics in attacking Iran. Over the years that the threat of attack has prevailed, there have been reports that have suggested that Israel will ‘go it alone’ if they feel threatened enough by Iran’s ‘nuclear weapon program’. One report recently even suggested that the US is “concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking action against Iran’s nuclear facilities”. This is all rhetorical nonsense dished up for public consumption. The reality is that it would be absolutely impossible for Israel to launch an entirely unilateral attack against Iran without US connivance.

In any attack they mount, Israel will use American aircraft which constantly require spare parts mostly from the US. They will also require ordnance which also mostly comes from the US; they will require vast quantities of military jet fuel, and, if Israel plans to attack Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time, it will also require massive amounts of diesel fuel to power up its ground forces. All of this comes from the US and, as was recorded in August 2010, Israel has already ordered that fuel which would by now have been delivered and stockpiled.

The other major logistic hurdle Israel needs to overcome is the one of getting to and from its target. Israel is separated from Iran by at least two other countries; Syria and Iraq or Jordan and Iraq. Either way, this amounts to a round rip of around 3000kms to bomb Bushehr and/or Qom, Iran’s two main nuclear facilities. The most likely route would be via Syria who would be unlikely to offer any resistance to Israeli overflights – especially if it came under attack itself. Then there is the question of overflying Iraq. The Iraqi government on its own is unlikely to allow Israeli aircraft to overfly their territory. Israel would need to be in cohorts with the US if it wished to get the US to convince the Iraqi government to allow Israeli aircraft into its airspace. And not only would Israel need to have Iraqi permission to pass through its airspace, it would also need to use Iraqi airspace for in-flight refuelling operations which the Israelis would need to utilise since their strike aircraft do not have the range to do the job in one round trip without refuelling.

The question then is; what exactly is Israel’s intended endgame in the event of an attack against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah?

Such a massive attack against all of its enemies at once is a huge commitment on Israeli resources and one of very high risk. It will, therefore, need to be decisive in terms of meeting all of its war aims.

Israel will have learnt the lessons of its past failures. After years of attacks against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been able to destroy Hezbollah or Hamas despite its efforts against Hezbollah in 2006 and against Hamas in 2008/2009. In the event of an attack against Iran, Israel is likely to simultaneously mount hitherto unprecedented attacks against both Hamas and Hezbollah. Such a strike will likely be opened up with a massive aerial and artillery barrage and then, since Israel does not have to commit ground forces to attacking Iran, it will be able to invade and occupy the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Latani River. At the same time, Israel is likely to fully occupy all of the West Bank in order to prevent any uprising by Palestinian resistance there and remilitarise the Golan Heights to prevent any backlash there.

In short, for Israel an attack against Iran and Israel’s other enemies on the pretext of pre-empting an immediate threat to its own existence will be the do or die action it will take in order to realise Zionism’s ultimate endgame; the creation of a Greater Israel.

The coming confrontation is not about Iran being a threat; it is about Israel ridding itself of all of its enemies in the places that it would like to annex as part of its realisation of creating a permanent Greater Israel nation abundant with fertile lands, its own water resources, and living space. War is its pretext.

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October 27, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU promises Israeli participation in Horizon 2020 project

MEMO | October 24, 2013

A senior official from the European Union has visited Israel to inform the government that it will find a solution to ensure Israel’s participation in the scientific Horizon 2020 project, Haaretz newspaper has claimed. This is in spite of EU restrictions on dealing with Israeli companies and research centres operating in the illegal West Bank settlements which takes effect in January 2014. The EU ban on such dealings threatens to lose Israeli research centres around $200 million.

Europe-Israel discussions regarding Israel’s participation in the 2020 project stalled when the EU approved the economic restrictions on Israeli companies and research centres in the West Bank. The European guidelines dictate that any future agreement with Israel should make it clear that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, are not part of Israel and therefore not covered by EU-Israel agreements. Since then, talks over Israel’s participation in Europe’s largest scientific project turned from a technical issue to a complex political matter, especially as a few Israeli research centres likely to join the project are active in the settlements.

According to Haaretz, Israel and the United States are exercising “tremendous pressure” on EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton to relax the new restrictions. Israel has also threatened that it will not join the European project if the restrictions remain in place. The newspaper said that Ashton was scheduled to deliver the draft project to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs two weeks ago with clarifications of the restrictions and the proposed agreement but decided to postpone the trip so that leaks could be avoided, which might damage the discussions.

“A high-level European delegation is scheduled to arrive in Israel next week,” said Haaretz, “headed by the Secretary-General of the European External Action Service, Pierre Vimont, who will meet with senior officials from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economy and Science.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel said that the latest bone of contention with the EU is the demand that Israeli companies wishing to take part in Horizon 2020 should state publicly that they are not active in the settlements and occupied Palestinian territories.

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October 24, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel locks-down neighbourhood after Palestinians make hole in Apartheid Wall

MEMO | October 24, 2013

The Israeli occupation authorities have imposed a complete closure of Kabsa neighbourhood in Abu-Dis on the outskirts of the holy city of Jerusalem in response to activists smashing a 2.5 metre wide hole in the Apartheid Wall.

Eyewitnesses described a “massive” number of Israeli security forces tracking down dozens of Palestinian youth responsible for making the hole in the wall built by Israel between the occupied West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. The youngsters clashed with the soldiers and threw rocks at them. No casualties were reported.

00013-21b93d4f46After making the hole, a number of the Palestinians crawled through and stood on the Jerusalem side for a minute. “The youth wanted to send a message to the Israeli occupation that they can enter the city despite the measures put in place by the occupation to stop them,” said witnesses.

Activist Ata Jefal told the Turkish Anadolu news agency that he and his friends have sent a number of signals to the Israelis that they can enter the city at will.

Kabsa lies to the east of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Its residents do not have a free access to the mosque because of the Israeli wall, the building of which began in 2002. At 8 metres high the wall has control towers and CCTV manned around the clock. Its final length is planned to be 780km, most of which will be built on occupied Palestinian land. Although the Israelis claim that it is a “security” wall, the fact that it takes up so much of the occupied West Bank has led to it being described as just another means of grabbing more Palestinian land, along with illegal settlements, settler-only roads, “nature reserves” and “military zones”. Just over 60 per cent of the wall has been completed.

October 24, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli settlers steal Palestinian olives in West Bank

Palestinian lady with her olive trees

MEMO | October 21, 2013

On Monday morning at dawn, Israeli settlers stole ripe olives from Palestinian farms in different areas of the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli forces detained a Palestinian citizen at a moveable military checkpoint in Nablus.

Witnesses and farm owners told the Al-Quds Network that the settlers stole significant amounts of ripe olives from different farms. They also said that the settlers were hindering the arrival of many farmers who were heading to their farms in order to pick the olives.

Palestinian sources said that the settlers stole the olives from the neighbourhoods of Fara, Tal-Farata and Amateen. The sources also confirmed that the settlers were preventing farmers from approaching their farms, despite the farmers’ cooperation with Israeli officials in this regard.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces invaded the Palestinian city of Nablus and detained Aboud Soboh, a Palestinian from the neighbourhood of Ras Al-Ein.

Witnesses reported that after invading the city, Israeli forces set up moveable checkpoints and then they arrested Soboh at one of these checkpoints.

Two of Soboh’s brothers are currently detained in Israeli jails.

Images from alquds.com

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October 22, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces close checkpoints before movement of Palestinians on second day of Eid

Palestine Information Center – 17/10/2013

NABLUS — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) obstructed the movement of Palestinian vehicles in the northern West Bank on the second day of Eid Al-Adha.

According to local sources, the IOF closed Za’atara and Hawara checkpoints on Wednesday evening, which caused long lines of vehicles extending two kilometers away.

The bulk of the vehicles had to stay in Hawara town until the IOF opened the checkpoints.

The IOF closed the checkpoints at six o’clock in the evening for several hours, eyewitnesses affirmed.

During the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, the Palestinians in the West Bank visit their relatives in other areas, but every year their movement is hindered by Israeli road blocks and closures.

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October 17, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Elderly man seriously injured by speeding Jewish settler in hit and run assault

IMEMC & Agencies | October 17, 2013

Palestinian medical sources have reported that an elderly Palestinian man was seriously injured after being hit by a settler’s vehicle in Al-Fondoq village, east of Qalqilia, in the northern part of the West Bank on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Police said that a speeding settler driving a Toyota Corolla hit Abdul-Hafith Mohammad Tayyem, in his sixties.

The settler, who fled the scene, was driving in the center of the Palestinian village.

Palestinian medical sources said that Tayyem was moved to an Israeli hospital due to the seriousness of his condition.

There have been dozens of similar incidents that have led to serious injuries and fatalities, in different part of the occupied West Bank, including in occupied East Jerusalem.

On Sunday evening [September 29, 2013] a Palestinian worker was injured after being rammed by a settler’s vehicle, near Husan town, west of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

On September 20, a Palestinian man was injured in a similar accident with an Israeli settler who fled the scene.
A week before the incident took place, Palestinian child was seriously injured after being hit by a settlers’ vehicle as she was walking home from school in Teqoua’ village, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The child Hayat Mohammad Suleiman, 8 years of age, was walking back home from school on the main road that is also used by Israeli settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements in the area.

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October 17, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli settlement construction rose by 70 percent in 2013, NGO says

Al-Akhbar | October 17, 2013

Construction starts in illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land rose by a “drastic” 70 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2013, an Israeli NGO said on Thursday.

According to figures released by the anti-settlement group Peace Now, between January and June construction starts were made on 1,708 new homes in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, compared with 995 in the first half of 2012.

Billing the figures as a “drastic rise,” Peace Now said only a third of the construction had taken place on the Israeli side of the vast separation barrier which cuts through the West Bank.

And 86 percent of the new construction was carried out in areas where tenders were not required, it said, meaning that building activity did not technically flout the quiet freeze on tenders Israel reportedly agreed to this year as Washington pushed for a resumption of direct peace talks.

“This means the ‘tender moratorium’ declared by the government until the prisoner release in (August) 2013 was not a general construction freeze but only of a small part of the construction in settlements,” the watchdog said, referring to the government’s release of 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners as a proclaimed gesture of goodwill.

US-sponsored direct peace talks resumed in late July after a hiatus of nearly three years, although both sides have kept a tight lid on the substance under discussion at the request of Washington.

“The fact that there is talk about a freeze on tenders doesn’t dramatically change the situation on the ground,” Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran told AFP. “They are building as usual.”

“The tendency of (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s government has been to build more in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank where tenders are not needed, compared with the previous government which built more in settlements closer to the Green Line,” she said.

Settlement building in the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War is considered illegal under international law, and the issue remains one of the most divisive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Fortunately the Palestinians did not leave the talks because of the continued construction in settlements, but there is a chance that if this policy continues, then it will be very very hard to hold on to the talks,” Ofran said.

The Palestinians said that settlement building threatened the future of the fledgling peace talks.

“Israel’s continued settlement building is destroying the peace process,” top negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP, holding “the Israeli government fully responsible for this situation and its outcome.”

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

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October 17, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Even the World Bank Understands

Palestine is being disappeared

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | October 17, 2013

Two recent images encapsulate the message behind the dry statistics of last week’s report by the World Bank on the state of the Palestinian economy.

The first is a poster from the campaigning group Visualising Palestine that shows a photoshopped image of Central Park, eerily naked. Amid New York’s skyscrapers, the park has been sheared of its trees by bulldozers. A caption reveals that since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has uprooted 800,000 olive trees belonging to Palestinians, enough to fill 33 Central Parks.

The second, a photograph widely published last month in Israel, is of a French diplomat lying on her back in the dirt, staring up at Israeli soldiers surrounding her, their guns pointing down towards her. Marion Castaing had been mistreated when she and a small group of fellow diplomats tried to deliver emergency aid, including tents, to Palestinian farmers whose homes had just been razed.

The demolitions were part of long-running efforts by Israel to clear Palestinians out of the Jordan Valley, the agricultural heartland of a future Palestinian state. Ms Castaing’s defiance resulted in her being quietly packed off back to Europe, as French officials sought to avoid a confrontation with Israel.

The World Bank report is a way of stating discreetly what Castaing and other diplomats hoped to highlight more directly: that Israel is gradually whittling away the foundations on which the Palestinians can build an independent economic life and a viable state.

This report follows a long line of warnings in recent years from international bodies on the dire economic situation facing Palestinians. But, significantly, the World Bank has homed in on the key battleground for an international community still harbouring the forlorn hope that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end in Palestinian statehood.

The report’s focus is on the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank, known as Area C, that is exclusively under Israeli control and in which Israel has implanted more than 200 settlements to grab Palestinian land and resources.

The World Bank report should be seen as a companion piece to the surprise decision of the European Union in the summer to exclude entities associated with the settlements from EU funding.

Both in turn reflect mounting frustration in European capitals and elsewhere at Israeli intransigence and seeming US impotence. Europeans, in particular, are exasperated at their continuing role effectively subsidising through aid an Israeli occupation with no end in sight.

With Israel and the Palestinians forced back to the negotiating table since July, and after the US secretary of state, John Kerry, warned that this was the “last chance” for a deal, the international community is desperate to exercise whatever small leverage it has on Israel and the US to secure a Palestinian state.

The World Bank’s concern about Area C is justified. This is the location of almost all the resources a Palestinian state will need to exploit: undeveloped land for future construction; arable land and water springs to grow crops; quarries to mine stone and the Dead Sea to extract minerals; and archaeological sites to attract tourism.

With access to these resources, the Palestinian Authority could generate an extra income of $3.4 billion a year, increasing its GDP by a third, reducing a ballooning deficit, cutting unemployment rates that have reached 23 per cent, easing poverty and food insecurity and helping the fledgling state break free of aid dependency. But none of this can be achieved while Israel maintains its chokehold on Area C in violation of the 1993 Oslo accords.

Israel has entrenched its rule in Area C precisely because of its wealth of natural resources. Israel neither wants the Palestinians to gain the assets with which to build a state nor intends to lose the many material benefits it has accrued for itself and the settler population in Area C.

It is its treatment of Area C that gives the lie to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that he has been pursuing “economic peace” with the Palestinians in lieu of progress on the diplomatic front. Rather, the Palestinian description of Israeli policy as “economic warfare” is much nearer the mark. During the Oslo period, the disparity between Israel’s per capita GDP and that of the Palestinians has doubled, to $30,000. And the World Bank says that the Palestinian economy is rapidly shrinking: the 11 per cent growth that Netanyahu took credit for in 2011 has crashed to 1.9 per cent in the first six months of this year. In the West Bank, GDP has actually contracted, by 0.1 per cent.

Despite its resources, Area C is being starved of Palestinian funds. Investors are averse to dealing with Israeli military authorities who invariably deny them development permits and severely restrict movement. The image of the French diplomat in the dirt is one that symbolises their own likely treatment if they confront Israel in Area C. Palestinian farmers, meanwhile, cannot grow profitable crops with the miserly water rations Israel allots them from their own aquifers.

Aware of the many obstacles to developing Area C, Palestinian officials have simply neglected it, concentrating instead on the densely populated and resource-poor third of the West Bank under their full or partial control.

The hope was that this would change when Kerry announced in the run-up to the renewed talks a plan to encourage private investors to pour in $4 billion to develop the Palestinian economy. But the reality, as the report notes, is that there can be no serious investment in the economic heartland of Area C until Israel’s control ends.

In effect, the World Bank is saying that Kerry’s plan – and the role of the international community’s envoy Tony Blair, the so-called Quatet Representative – is not only misguided, it is positively delusional. The Quartet has been trying to revive the Palestinian economy to usher in the conditions for statehood; the World Bank’s view is that there can be no Palestinian state, let alone economic revival, until Israel is forced out of the territories. The international community has it all back to front.

The idea that a financial lifeline – whether Kerry’s plan or Netanyahu’s economic peace – is going to smooth the path to the conflict’s end is an illusion. Peace, and prosperity, will come only when Palestinians are liberated from Israeli control.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

October 17, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Turning Blood into Money

Profiting from Killing

By Vacy Vlazna | Dissident Voice | October 16, 2013

Warning! The Lab contains war-porn and hard-core evil; watch and weep.

Yotam Feldman’s  documentary, released in August, is one of the most important exposés of the obscene rationale and execution of Israel’s hugely lucrative arms and security  industries through the voices of some of its ex-military key operators: Amos Golan, Shimon Naveh, Leo Gleser, and Yoav Galant.

Israel’s armament juggernaut currently turns over $7 billion p.a. and its phenomenal success is, as Feldman reveals, due to experience, that is, the testing of weaponry on the Palestinian population in the Israeli military ‘labs’ of Gaza and the West Bank:

I think the main product Israelis are selling, especially in the last decade, is experience… the testing of the products, the experience is the main thing they [customers] are coming to buy. They want the missile that was shot in the last operation in Gaza or the rifle that was used in the last West Bank incursion.

Without blinking an eye, Benjamin Ben Eleixer, Industry Minister proudly asserts the reason for the tremendous demand for Israeli weapons and technology,

If Israel sells weapons, they have been tested, tried out. We can say: we’ve used this for 10 years, 15 years.

Tested by Israeli killers on 1,398 Palestinian children murdered since 2000 and the hundreds of thousands of children who struggle with war trauma, PTSD and perpetual terror.

The Lab makes plain why the peace process, past, present and potential, is a total sham. The economy of Israel is inextricably dependent on war and the suffering of the Palestinians.

And the other is the fact that now the Israeli economy is so much dependent on these operations. It’s 20 percent of the exports. It’s 150,000 families–not people–in Israel actually dependent on this industry. And if one day it will stop, if there will be no next operation in Gaza, so Israel will have some economic problems.

The arms industry doesn’t belong to a few dealers, its owned by a whole country.

What better justification of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which targets state and private companies as well as all Israeli universities, through their military R&D programmes, that are ‘turning blood into money’.

Which gun made the shekel accelerate when sisters Amal, 2 and Suad Abed-Rabbo, 9, who was waving a white flag, were shot by tank personnel in Gaza?

The degradation of the Israeli mind and society through the perverted normalising of state-sanctioned cruel aggression and violent criminality is apparent in the egotistic strutting throughout the film of the Israeli warmongers, politicians and arms dealers, who are oblivious that to civilised people they come across as psychopaths:

Gen (ret.) Amiran Levin:

I want to move onto one point, speaking of Gaza, speaking of Lebanon, and other places we will occupy in the future. Since we want to maintain equilibrium, as a developed country, punishment as a strategy should be the main element…That’s the most important thing, Quantity is more important than quality. One mistake the army makes is judging each case individually, whether the person deserves to die or not. Most of these people were born to die, we just have to help them.

Lt.Co.(ret.) Shimon Naveh, a military philosopher –  yes, you read right, military philosopher — who talks like he’s swallowed a kilo of amphetamines, strolls through a bullet-riddled mock Arab village used for military exercises, moaning,

As you can see this isn’t an Arab village. It is a dead place. Maybe in our rosiest dreams this is what a Palestinian village would look like, but it isn’t one.

Gen.Yoav Galant, the ‘inventor’ of the 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead;

As far as I’m concerned the enemy has 3 options either he get killed, or he surrenders, or he flees.

Galant omits that the 1.6 million men, women, children and elderly of Gaza (for that matter all Palestinians) have nowhere to flee because Israel tightly controls Palestinian land, sea and airspace.

Thus we understand that the Israelis have the identical strategy of low intensity or asymmetrical warfare as the USA; only attack nations that are on their knees through sieges, sanctions and substandard armaments.

Naveh, in an interview in the Small Wars Journal admits as much:

When you fight a war against a rival who’s by all means inferior to you, you may lose a guy here or there, but you’re in total control. It’s nice. You can pretend that you fight the war and yet it’s not really a dangerous war.

Apart from the Hamas freedom fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and a ‘modest stock of weapons’, Palestine has no army, navy, airforce to defend its people. There are, of course, President Abbas’ US armed and trained security forces but they brutally police their own people on behalf of Israel.

Feldman shows how Israel’s major arms companies make arms selling sexy. At a weapons trade exhibition in Paris, a perky young female rep demonstrates on screen the precision capabilities of IAI products, and at the Shivta military base, foreign officers who have come to view a missile demonstration are divided into groups led by ‘lovely’ female Israeli soldiers.

Foreign governments, like Australia, contribute generously to optimising the profits of Israel’s  death merchants while simultaneously appeasing their electorates,  Galant complains, “There’s a lot of hypocrisy, they condemn you politically, while they ask you what your trick is, you Israelis, for turning blood into money,” nevertheless the gains for  Israel as specified by him are, “First of all it gains security, secondly the nations and the armies of the world want to be friends with the strong, just side, and the winning side.”

Strong, yes, JUST? Not according to the parents of little 3 year old Ahmed As -Sinwar who was found under a  pile of rubble and stones with a hole in his head, and not according to the parents of the other 352 children killed plus the 860 children injured and maimed in Operation Cast Lead by the sought-after Israeli air and ground missiles, artillery shelling, phosphorous bombs, flechettes, bullets and unexploded ordnance.

It is utterly macabre and beyond decent comprehension that the sales of drones were boosted by the wilful killing by drones of 116 children during Operation Cast Lead.

The highest echelon of the Israeli government has control of the business of death. All export of arms and security services are OK’d by SIBAT, the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s export agency.

Amos Golan, an arms dealer who started “with a dream”, views himself as a “good guy” not someone who kills innocent people in his spare time. He was a former commander of the Duvdevan special forces unit that conducts undercover operations disguised as Arabs and the inventor of the highly profitable Cornershot assault and sniper gun that enables the user to see around corners.

His Silver Shadow Advanced Security Systems (SSASS), listed with SIBAT, has provided security solutions and training for the dictatorships of the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Uganda where SSASS trained the Black Mamba death squad accused of human rights violations.

Leo Gleser, a generous father and grandfather, states that since 9/11 “all defense solutions now come from Israel through Israeli companies.” Who’d have thought 9/11 would benefit Israel? His own company, International Security and Defense Systems (ISDS), listed with SIBAT,  was “established in 1982 by highly experienced officers, former operatives of I.S.A. Israeli Security Agency, the MOSSAD and the Defence Forces” has among its clients the Athens, Barcelona, Beijing and Rio Olympic  Games, 2014 World Cup Soccer,  joint ventures in security training with China, India, Brazil, Spain and USA.

It also serves the United Nations which appears to have overlooked that Gleser’s company trained, in the 80s, the CIA backed brutal Honduran Battalion 3-16 involved in the disappearance of 191 people. (This has been documented in Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s book Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship.)

War criminal and child-killer, Noav Galant, once tipped to become the next Chief of General Staff, is now retired because of allegations that he appropriated public lands near his home for his private use which is irony par excellence given he is on the board of HaShomer HaChadash that helps Israeli “farmers and ranchers in the Negev and the Galilee who administer vast tracts of state-owned land to deal with the threat of illegal seizure of their land”, which is to say, to prevent the ‘ongoing encroachment of the Bedouin on state-owned land ‘ which we all know is ancestral Bedouin land seized by Israel. As we have seen, Galant knows all about hypocrisy.

The Lab’s exposition of Israel’s profiteering from its military expertise and arms dealing is nothing new as this has been well documented elsewhere such as in Jane Haapiseva-Hunter ‘s ‘Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America’. The impact of The Lab lies in directly hearing and seeing for ourselves Israel’s deviants cheerily admit to making big bucks from ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Feldman ends The Lab with a masterstroke of irony filming, at a conference, these fat Israeli death feeding maggots, nodding and smiling to John Lennon’s beautiful and inspiring song, Imagine ..

Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace…

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Aceh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 and then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

October 16, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Occupation Continues Violations against Palestinian children: UNICEF

Al-Manar | October 15, 2013

DataFiles-Cache-TempImgs-2012-1-images_News_2012_03_21_iof-child_1_300_0The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported that Israeli violations against detained Palestinian children are still ongoing, despite an alleged Israeli decision to improve their conditions, and the methods of interrogation.

In a report published on Monday, the UNICEF said “violations are ongoing,” seven months after an initial report underlined widespread mistreatment of Palestinian teenagers arrested by Zionist forces in the occupied West Bank.

The UNICEF said that despite its earlier report violations against detained children are still ongoing, despite the 38 recommendations that outlined these violations and the manner to address them.

The international body cited 20 sample cases of abuse of youths in the West Bank in the second quarter of this year.

The UNICEF said that heavily armed soldiers would violently break into homes, before they force the children out of their beds, and take them to interrogation facilities, cuffed, blindfolded, and in a state of extreme fear.

It said that Israeli interrogators would question the children about allegations of throwing stones at soldiers and settlers, and that the interrogators would threaten the children with physical violence, death, in addition to sexual assault threats not only against the children, but also against a family member.

October 15, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian village continuously inhabited for 3,000 years about to be destroyed by Israel

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | October 14, 2013

The Israeli High Court is set to rule on the forced expulsion of all of the residents of the village of Khirbat Zanuta, southwest of Hebron in the southern West Bank on Monday.

Villagers in Khirbat Zanuta (image by ACRI)

Villagers in Khirbat Zanuta (image by ACRI)

The decision comes five years after the initial order was made by the court to demolish the village. That decision was put on hold when an appeal was filed on behalf of the villagers by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel,

“Last year, a Jewish expansionist organization named Regavim succeeded in reviving the case by filing an amicus-curia request; soon thereafter, the state submitted its full response to the petition. In April 2012, the Civil Administration issued additional demolition orders for new structures in the village, including several cisterns (ACRI is arguing that objections to the new orders should be joined to the original petition, but the Civil Administration disagrees). The Supreme Court heard additional arguments on July 30, 2012. During the hearing, the justices delivered harsh criticism of the State for its intent to demolish the village without suggesting a solution for its residents.”

But the decision on Monday is expected to result in the forced expulsion of all of the village’s inhabitants, who have lived on the land of their ancestors for as long as they can remember. They consider themselves stewards of the ancient archaeological site on which they live and tend their sheep, and have prevented any looting or destruction of artifacts on the site.

The Zionist organization Regavim that managed to revive the demolition order on the village had a quick response time from the court. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reports that the organization has a “cozy relationship with the authorities”, according to its Director Bezalel Smotrich, who told the settler website Hakol Hayehudi on July 31, 2012, “Another parameter of the success of Regavim’s activities is the treatment by authorities in the establishment. Among the ranks in the field and in a lot of departments of the Interior Ministry, Israel Land Administration, the Justice Ministry and more, they view Regavim as a positive factor that is coming to their aid to steel them against the pressure they receive from the left. Most of them are good people, idealistic people… happy for the counter-pressure we exercise after years in which they absorbed so much heat in the form of pressure and letters from left-wing organizations.”

The inhabitants of Khirbat Zanuta are shepherds, who have traditionally lived in caves and structures around the cave entrances. The village is located in what Israel calls ‘Area C’, a designation created under the Oslo Accords in 1993 for land that was to temporarily remain under Israeli civil administration control, but should have been transitioned to Palestinian rule within five years. That never happened, and all of the areas designated as ‘Area C’ in 1993 remain under full Israeli control today – most of the 500,000 Israeli settlers that have taken over land in the West Bank in the twenty years since that designation have moved into ‘Area C’.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel,

“The case of Zanuta is demonstrative of the Israeli government’s planning policy as it relates to the Palestinians in Area C, in which actions as severe as the destruction of basic humanitarian structures are justified by an absurd Catch 22 that penalizes residents for failing to apply for a permit they could never have been granted. If these demolition orders are carried out, the residents of Zanuta will be stripped of their most basic humanitarian rights: shelter, water, and livelihood, not to mention dignity, culture, and way of life. As an occupying power in Area C, Israel is bound by international law to protect the indigenous community. The case exemplifies a policy of demolishing buildings in Palestinian villages that removes indigenous peoples from their lands in absolute violation of the international law which protects them.”

October 14, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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