BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces have blocked the main entrances to a southern West Bank village since Saturday night, locals said, impeding villagers’ ability to travel freely.
Locals in the village of Beit Fajjar south of Bethlehem told Ma’an on Tuesday that Israeli forces had shut the roads in and out of the village by constructing large earth mounds on them.
Locals said that they were unsure of the reasons behind what they called the “collective punishment” of the village, highlighting that the Israeli authorities had cited security reasons without giving any explanation.
As a result of the closure, residents need to take bypass routes through the nearby al-Arrub refugee camp or Tuqu village. However, these routes are bumpy mountainous paths unqualified as roads.
The town has a population of about 15,000 many of whom leave every day to work outside. In addition, the town does not have a hospital or a major medical center, and so access to Bethlehem, about 10 kilometers to the north, is important for healthcare and emergencies.
The town is also known for stone factories and quarries, and the closure of the main road creates a serious problem for truck drivers who need to travel back and forth every day.
Furthermore, dozens of teachers who work at several public schools in the town come from other cities and village in Bethlehem district every day.
Zionism is a system that chafes against the world. With its idea of a chosen people and its privileged control of states and institutions, where one whisper behind the scenes can outweigh the voice of millions, it offends us as an injustice. That injustice continues day in and day out for all the world to see in Palestine as occupation soldiers arrest even small children and shoot young demonstrators with impunity, as settlers burn olive trees and go on rampages of theft and harassment, and as settlers and soldiers together increase their attacks on the sacred buildings and grounds of the al-Aqsa mosque.
The idea that nothing is sacred seems to be at the front of Zionist ideology. This may be the motive for the terror we associate with it. We are stupefied by the brazenness of the repeated attacks on Lebanon, the bombings of Gaza, the rocket assassinations of Palestinian leaders, bulldozer and tear gas rifle murders of solidarity activists, the massacre of humanitarian volunteers on the Mavi Marmara, home demolitions, the killing of Palestinians in their own streets and on their own farmland. Perhaps this is the point — brazenness inspires fear, and fear inspires obedience. They seem to think that if you can sufficiently shock your enemy and the rest of the world, you have control. For people in the US, 9/11 would be the paradigm of this. Zionist planners Michael Ledeen and Philip Zelikow have defined covert US foreign policy by promoting the ideas of “creative chaos” and the power of “the searing event,” respectively, to establish a “new world order.”
But fear is not effective in the long run. We may immediately see through the act that tried to impose it, or, when we have had time to think, instead of being mystified, we are disgusted. As they say, the truth comes out; lies are hard to maintain. In the end perhaps this is because some things have remained sacred — human dignity, the right to live, the right to have a place to live, the innocence of children, the beauty of nature — and we remember that. Our feeling for these things is of a spiritual nature, and can’t ultimately be taken away by the aggressive and predatory weapons used by those who have power in the world.
Zionism chafes because each of the several million people it has expelled remember that they had a home in Palestine, and they know that to have that home back is their right. It is a constant irritant to the Arab people who have not yet been forced out, each of whom have a story to tell of wrongs committed against them during the nightmare occupation. After 67 years of attack and dispossession, Zionism has built up a long list of souls who have been wrongly treated and who have not forgotten.
This is the context in which one might understand the case of a Palestinian activist named Amer Jubran. The facts of Amer’s life are comprised of a number of wrongs attributable to Zionism. His family was forced to leave the area of al-Khalil in Palestine before he was born. They went into exile in Jordan. Amer’s grandfather was shot by an Israeli soldier in Palestine and left to bleed to death in the middle of a road. His relatives who remained in Palestine live under occupation and undergo each day the harassment and mistreatment which we all know now are the Israelis’ method of making all the rest of the indigenous people leave. At college age Amer chose a second country of exile – the United States. He may not have known then but he soon learned that he had moved to a country which Zionism had made its principal host (in the biological sense). He brought the cause of Palestine with him. In 2000 he was arrested for protesting an “Israel Day” celebration in a wealthy suburb of Boston. A long court struggle followed, and he was found not guilty. He was arrested again in 2002 during the Ashcroft-inspired attack on all Arabs and Muslims in the US, which Ashcroft waged through immigration authorities. This arrest followed two days after a march for Palestinian rights in the streets of downtown Boston which Amer helped to organize, and which had wide support. But one person whispered, and the deed was done. Another long court struggle followed. In 2004, unable to stand up against the stacked deck which is the US judicial system, he was forced to leave the US and return to Jordan.
In Jordan Amer began working at his family’s business and started a family, but continued to raise the cause of Palestine. In 2006 he was beaten and arrested at a protest at the Zionist embassy in Amman. In 2010 he gave a lecture at the American University in Beirut and was under noticeable surveillance both leaving and returning to Amman. Just a few days ago, May 5, 2014 he was arrested at his home in Amman by the Jordanian secret police, the Mukhabarat, and has since been held in an unknown location with no charges and no representation by a lawyer. No one is able to reach him. His most recent arrest is due to his being a supporter of the resistance to the Zionist project in the entire region. Where Zionism is concerned, it is no different in Jordan than in the United States. Zionism is indeed a world movement. Politically motivated police and judicial harassment of critics of Zionism can be found on every continent.
It is amazing that so many power structures in so many parts of the world have been so thoroughly invaded that a relatively few people could steal the relatively small piece of land which is historic Palestine. But there it is. And there is the constant irritation which this theft has brought about in the world. The irritation will not go away until the injustice is addressed. It will chafe and spring up in odd places forever until the truth is able to come out.
The message is simple: DON’T EVER VOTE FOR A FRIEND OF ISRAEL.
Please distribute this video as widely as possible. It is one of the few chances that the Un-chosen People have of fighting back.
But be careful who you ask for advice. If I were a Friend of Israel (perish the thought) I would try to infiltrate as many anti-Israel organisations that I could, including websites that purported to be pro-Palestinian.
Remember Mossad’s motto: “By way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War.”
The BBC/Panorama programme Death in the Med. It is best to search the web for a version that can be watched where you are.
BBC Bias: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla (Anthony Lawson) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afBr10…
A California school district has come under fire from Zionist groups for giving students an assignment asking them to examine both sides of the “holocaust” story, draw their own conclusions based on the documentation provided as well as their own research and then write an essay about it.
The Rialto Unified School District near Los Angeles gave out the 18-page assignment to eighth grade students to encourage critical thinking, but the Zionists have unleashed their fury upon the school district’s administrators for daring to allow any debate on the sacred Shoah. Only one side of the holocaust story will be allowed to enter into the curriculum of learning institutions, says the Zionists.
The assignment’s introduction explained: “When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual historical event, but instead is a propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.” The assignment then instructs students to “read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based upon cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe the Holocaust was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”
According to the Zionist self-appointed arbiters of all historical truth, there is no “debate” about the realities of the holocaust because it is an event etched in stone that cannot be altered even slightly. This dogmatic approach to learning about history flies in the face of basic principles of logic, discernment and academic freedom.
The sycophantic dolt Chris Matthews addressed the controversy on his boring MSNBC show “Hardball,” bringing on a spokesman of the Zionist Simon Wiesenthal Center to feign outrage about the “monstrosity” of allowing students to decide for themselves what really happened in Germany’s concentration camps during the Second World War.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Simon Wiesenthal Center mouthpiece, told Matthews that the assignment “elevated hate with historic fact.” What one might discern from the rabbi’s incoherent statement is that historical facts are “hateful” in nature and even though they are true should be discarded or suppressed to avoid upsetting Jewish sensibilities.
Rabbi Cooper went on to assure MSNBC’s viewership that all of the eighth graders of the school district in question would be brow beaten into accepting the Zionist version of WW2. All 2,200 eighth grade students of Rialto, said the rabbi, will be forced to attend the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “Museum of Tolerance” to get a good dousing of “holocaust” propaganda sure to pacify any doubts that they may have gleaned from the assignment.
What the students won’t be told is that the “Museum of Tolerance” was caught peddling an out-and-out hoax in the 1990s. Revisionist researcher David Cole recently exposed how the museum had set up a display purporting to showcase the function of the dubious “gas vans” that Zionists claim were used by the Germans to kill Jews in Eastern Europe during the war.
A looped video was presented to impressionable and gullible observers showing a re-enactment of the alleged killing procedure of the mystical “gas vans.” In a video published on YouTube, Cole explains that the museum’s video display claimed to be a selected segment from a “documentary” but was actually lifted from a 1962 fictional Polish film called “The Ambulance,” directed by Janusz Morgenstern.
On the MSNBC show, Rabbi Cooper suggests that there are only two types of people who would doubt the holocaust: 1) people who would like a chance to “finish the job,” and 2) “sophisticated bigots” who are more comfortable not having to deal with the reality of what happened.
Irrespective of Cooper’s delusions, the fact is that most holocaust skeptics are normal citizens who have decided to approach the subject from a scientific standpoint, not an emotional or ideological one. Chemists and experts like Germar Rudolf and Fred Leuchter did not begin their inquiries into the gas chamber claims with preconceived judgments or notions — they went into their investigations believing fully the official stories about mass gassings. After extensively observing the facilities claimed to be the gas chambers, these two qualified analysts came out as disbelievers.
Pointing out that in 1990 the Auschwitz State Museum reduced the death total there from 4 to 1 million, and that the real death total at that camp is probably still much lower than the latter figure, is not an “anti-Semitic” gesture, it is an honest one. Likewise, observing that the Majdanek and Mauthausen camps that were once said by establishment sources to harbour the remains of 3.5 million murdered Jews but are now said to be the resting places of less than 100,000 Jews, is not an act of malice but one of accuracy.
Delineating that the wartime atrocity stories of “human soap” and “skin lampshades” supposedly manufactured from Jewish corpses are patently false is not “elevating hate,” it is actually decreasing hate against the German people.
Emphasizing the discernable pattern of Zionist propaganda dating back to the late 1800s showing the repetitive dissemination of Jewish persecution stories, oftentimes invoking the mystical “six million” number, is not an exercise in “racism” but rather empirical observation.
The cartoonish “evil Nazi” archetype was created by the winners of WW2 in order to facilitate the cover up of massive Allied war crimes and to accelerate the Zionist agenda to invade and colonize Palestine under a facade of victimhood. Nazi Germany was no more evil than the Allied powers, no more racist than Britain or America or Zionist Jews themselves, and no more murderous than the countries that won that war and the nation born out of that war: Zionist Israel.
Someone wise once said that the truth is the first victim of war. Governments keen to justify their actions in a time of conflict and conflagration will stoop to any level of deceit and use every underhanded trick in the book to malign their adversaries.
Governments tell falsehoods with impunity when the people fail to think critically about what they are being told and the agenda that may lie behind it.
If we are to ever fully be free, we must cast aside the myths of the past that are currently being used to mentally enslave the masses of the present.
RAMALLAH – Over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners started an open hunger strike on Thursday in solidarity with detainees held in administrative detention by Israeli authorities, a Palestinian official said.
Palestinian Authority Minister of Detainees Issa Qaraqe said that the prisoners are demanding that Israel end the practice of holding Palestinians in custody without charge or trial.
More than 100 Palestinians in Israeli prisons launched a mass, open-ended hunger strike on April 24 in protest against their detention without trial.
Qaraqe said he holds Israeli authorities responsible for this “explosion” in protest action. He declared May 9 a ‘Day of Rage’ in solidarity with administrative detainees, which will see a range of solidarity activities after noon prayers.
A number of the strike leaders have been placed into isolation in Beersheba prison, including Muayad Sharab, Sufian Jamjoum and Abd al-Kareem Qawasmi.
An Israeli prison services spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
A 2012 agreement which ended a hunger strike of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners was meant to end the detention without trial of Palestinians, but as of March 1, 183 Palestinians were still being held under administrative detention.
Palestinians held in administrative detention are often held without charge or trial for months and without access to the evidence leading to their detention, even though international law stipulates this tactic only be used in exceptional circumstances.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday denounced as a “fifth column” thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel who joined a demonstration calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Around 10,000 protesters, many waving Palestinian flags, joined a rally inside the 1949 Green Line on Tuesday to remember 530 villages from which some 760,000 people fled or were expelled in the 1948 Nakba.
The rally took place as Israel marked the 66th anniversary of what it describes as its “independence day,” with Lieberman accusing the demonstrators of being traitors.
“Those who marched with flags of the Palestinian Authority demanding that it not give up on the right of return, are a fifth column whose aim is the destruction of Israel,” he told army radio.
He also addressed the demonstration on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
“To those Arabs that took part today in the ‘Nakba Day’ procession and waved Palestinian flags, I suggest that next time they march directly to Ramallah and they stay there,” he wrote.
But he acknowledged that those who joined the Nakba demonstration were only “a minority” among Israel’s Arab minority, who make up just over a fifth of the overall population of 8.2 million.
At the rally, which took place in a small village in the North, the protesters marched under the slogan: “Your ‘independence’ day is our Nakba” — Arabic for catastrophe.
More than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes by armed Zionist forces when Israel declared itself a state in May 1948. Today, with their descendants, they number an estimated 4.8 million.
Around 160,000 Palestinians stayed in their homes and took Israeli citizenship. Official figures published last week show they now number 1,694,000 people, or 20.7 percent of the population.
Lieberman, a hardliner within the ruling rightwing coalition, is an open proponent transferring densely-populated Palestinian areas inside the Green Line to the control of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority in any future peace deal.
For many years Israel has violated well established standards of international law and has defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in its repeated acts of military aggression.
Most of the world regards Israel’s policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as illegal and outrageous. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities.
“The whole world,“ said United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, “is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don’t think the whole world… can be wrong.” [1]
Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and defend its policies. For many years the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid.
Why is the US such a staunch bastion of support for Israel?
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason. Speaking to an audience in Boston, he said:
“But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic … People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful.” [2]
Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only two or three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence – much more than any other ethnic or religious group.
As Jewish author and political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg has pointed out: [3]
“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times… The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked…
“Jews are only three percent of the nation’s population and comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation’s elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants.”
Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, similarly notes the “disproportionate political power” of Jews, which is “pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America.” He goes on to explain that “Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry.“ [4]
Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: [5]
“During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals… 20 percent of professors at the leading universities … 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington … 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers in two or more primetime television series.”
Vanity Fair magazine in October 2007 published a list of what it calls “the world’s most powerful people” – a lineup of the one hundred most influential media bosses, bankers, publishers, image makers, and so forth, who determine how we view ourselves and the world, and who – directly and indirectly — shape our lives and our futures. Jews made up more than half of the powerful men and women on the Vanity Fair list, reported a leading Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post. [6]
The influence of American Jewry in Washington, The Jerusalem Post has also noted, is “far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and US officials acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns.” One member of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations “estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the funds for [President Bill] Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.” [7]
Mother Jones magazine compiled a listing of the 400 leading contributors to the 2000 US national elections. Seven of the first ten were Jewish, as were twelve of the top 20, and 125 of the top 250. [8]
The single biggest donor to American politicians is Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban. In January 2007 it was revealed that he had donated approximately $13 million to various US political candidates. [9] The New York Times has noted Saban’s ardent devotion to the Jewish state: “He has since emerged as perhaps the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington, and increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli. ‘I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,’ he said.” [10]
A Grip on Hollywood
“It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture,” acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. “Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.” [11]
One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward. In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote: [12]
“In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation …
“Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish — one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films.
“The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America’s most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates.”
“As a proud Jew,” writes Joel Stein, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, “I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood … I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.” [13]
Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely portrayed as high-minded, trustworthy, compassionate, and deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily accept such imagery, not everyone is impressed. “I am very angry with some of the Jews,” complained actor Marlon Brando during a 1996 interview. “They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are… Hollywood is run by Jews. It’s owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering.” [14]
A Well-Entrenched Factor
This intimidating power is not a new phenomenon, but has long been an important factor in American life. In 1972, during a private White House meeting, President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham spoke frankly about the Jewish grip on the media. “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” said Graham, the nation’s best-known Christian evangelist. “You believe that?,” Nixon responded. “Yes, sir,” said Graham. “Oh, boy,” replied Nixon. “So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.” [15]
In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection: [16]
“How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?… It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power … The Jewish connection covers all areas and reaches every level. Most Americans may not even sense this gigantic effort, but there is scarcely a Jew who is not touched by its tentacles…
“The extent and depth to which organized Jewry reached – and reaches – in the U.S. is indeed awesome … The most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control … Jews, toughened by centuries of persecution, have risen to places of prime importance in the business and financial world… Jewish wealth and acumen wields unprecedented power in the area of finance and investment banking, playing an important role in influencing U.S. policy toward the Middle East … In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles.”
Foreign Policy Role
Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, “believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own.” [17]
In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons candidly declared in May 2003 that pro-Israel Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US and Britain into war in Iraq. Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy known as “Father of the House” because he is the longest-serving Member of Parliament, said: “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians … There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.” [18]
Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the United States: [19]
“I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”
Today the danger has never been greater. Israel and Jewish organizations are prodding the United States into new wars against Israel’s enemies.
To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The “Jewish lobby” is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict.
As long as the “very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system and the American media, the Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the Israeli threat to peace, and the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East.
3. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago, 1993), pp. 1, 103.
4. S. Steinlight, “The Jewish Stake in America’s Changing Demography: Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy,” Center for Immigration Studies, Nov. 2001.
( http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/back1301.html )
5. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 26-27.
7. Janine Zacharia, “The Unofficial Ambassadors of the Jewish State,” The Jerusalem Post (Israel), April 2, 2000. Reprinted in “Other Voices,” June 2000, p. OV-4, a supplement to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
11. M. Medved, “Is Hollywood Too Jewish?,” Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996), p. 37.
12. Jonathan Jeremy Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp. 39-40, 290-291.
14. Interview with Larry King, CNN network, April 5, 1996. “Brando Remarks,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1996, p. F4 (OC). A short time later, Brando was obliged to apologize for his remarks.
15. “Nixon, Billy Graham Make Derogatory Comments About Jews on Tapes,” Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2002 (or Feb. 28, 2002)
( http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/02/Graham_Nixon.html );
“Billy Graham Apologizes for ’72 Remarks,” Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2002. “Graham Regrets Jewish Slur,” BBC News, March 2, 2002.
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1850077.stm ) The conversation apparently took place on Feb. 1, 1972.
16. A. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), pp. 206, 209, 212, 218, 228, 229.
17. The New York Times, May 27, 1996. Shavit is identified as a columnist for Ha’aretz, a Hebrew-language Israeli daily newspaper, “from which this article is adapted.”
18. F. Nelson, “Anger Over Dalyell’s ‘Jewish Cabal’ Slur,” The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 5, 2003; M. White, “Dalyell Steps Up Attack On Levy,” The Guardian (London), May 6, 2003.
See also: M. Weber, ” Iraq: A War for Israel” ( http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml )
19. Interview with Moorer, Aug. 24, 1983. Quoted in: Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (Lawrence Hill, 1984 and 1985), p. 161.
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Residents of Qeitun area of Al-Khalil, near Shuhada St. are presented with a very different kind of daily routine than other areas of the occupied West Bank. Israel occupation forces not only raid houses and harass people on a daily basis, but also use the local population as part of their military training.
On Tuesday, the 29th of April, the Israeli army was training for the erecting and working of a flying checkpoint, pulling over cars on the main road of the area which leads to the military base, also called Qeitun. During this training the commander was instructing the soldiers how to stop and search drivers and their cars.
Two days later, on Thursday 1st of May at 11:30pm, ISM activists were called out to witness the Israeli army performing a massive operation of night raids, with approximately 100 soldiers. When the activist got to the area, the army had detained an 18-year old. The youth was released 30 minutes after the arrival of the activists. Many of the local people, still in their nightdresses, were out in the streets while the soldiers were inside their houses.
At around 1:00am the soldiers left the area and had what seemed like a quick evaluation of the whole operation, making it difficult to know whether it was an actual military operation or just some sort of training, similar to the flying checkpoint training that took place two days earlier. For the people of Qeitun there’s no actual difference between “training” and a live military operation of the occupation forces.
In an ISM visit with a family of the Qeitun area, they report that the soldiers have been starting the raids as early as 9pm and had raided a total of 50 houses. They also reported that during one of the raids the soldiers had broken into a house with such violence that an elderly woman with a heart condition, had gone into coma and had to be rushed to the hospital.
The family reported that the area experiences night raids at least two or three times a week. Israeli soldiers enter and harass the locals on a daily basis and the army has arrested two minors during the last month.
During the second intifada almost all families living in the houses located near Shuhada St. were forced out by the Israeli army, allegedly for security reasons, making this part of the area a ghost town.
Ryad, a resident of the Bethlehem region, has a small orchard with apricot, hazelnut, olive and fig trees. Near the orchard is an ancient agricultural structure, aged some one hundred years, which serves Ryad and his family as a tool shed, as well as a resting place in the far too many hot days.
One day, Ryad was asked by his nephew, Khader, to hold a family barbecue in the place. Ryad agreed. As Khader reached the place, however, he was shocked to see a few men, whom he would soon identify as Israeli civilians, attempting to damage the structure. Khader shouted at them and moved in their direction, and the three immediately fled.
When Ryad reached the place, after being summoned by Khader, he found that the Israeli civilians did not limit themselves to their attempt to destroy the structure: they also stole some agricultural tools and silverware that were in it. Why? Because.
We’ve already become pretty much inured to the daily violence against Palestinians, whether coming from the military or civilians. We’ve grown used to it. After all, it happens so often you could mumble the excuses in your sleep: The soldier felt in danger, they were near the fence, they were somewhere they shouldn’t be, and anyway, you-know-what-they-would-do-to-us-if-they-only-could. Violence towards a person can always be excused, if that’s your cup of tea. Just as rapists and their supporters can always find excuses for sexual violence towards women (she wanted it, why did she leave the house at such an hour, what kind of person walks around such places, why did she dress like that). Such excuses are necessary for any injustice. You want to be able to look in the mirror afterwards, after all; furthermore, you should be ready for a situation where such actions are routine.
“To plunder, to butcher, to steal: these they falsely name empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.” These are piercing words by the Roman historian Tacitus in the mouth of the warlord Calgacus, planning his final battle against the Roman invader. To the insurrection of people fighting for their freedom, we give the misnomer of “disturbances of order”; land stolen from them by the cunning of jurists, is called “public lands”; coated steel bullets, “rubber bullets”; shooting an unarmed man, “the force was acting in accordance with the rules of engagement.”
But while we’ve become accustomed to excusing violence towards persons, we still have a problem explaining away simple theft. Such incidents pierce the security veil of fog. Every IDF veteran can easily recite all the excuses for why it is proper to fire a lead bullet from an assault rifle through the body of an unarmed child; but he’d have a hard time justifying the looting of the body. And such incidents allow us to see what lies beyond the veil of excuses.
And what we see, when all is said and done, is theft. Theft on the part of people living in a well-to-do settlement, enjoying all the munificence the government of a high-tech superpower can throw at them. The theft, as we’ve seen in an earlier case, of a donkey and a few obsolete agricultural tools. Did the thieves who broke into Ryad’s shed need those tools and utensils? Not likely. But they took them because they knew they could take them, and nothing would happen. There would be no investigation, no indictment; they knew they were the lords of the land, and that they could express their lordship by carelessly harming the property of others.
Is there, or can there be, any excuse – a security excuse, a national excuse, a religious excuse – for damaging a shed used by farmers for shelter and stealing their tools, tools which will not make much of a difference to the thief, but for the victim, cause real damage to his ability to make a living?
And, behind all the bright shining lies that the Israeli civilians in the West Bank tell themselves – the “security needs” lie, the “redemption of land” lie, the “land of our forefathers” lie – can’t we see the same urge, the urge to better yourself at the expense of someone whose condition are far worse than yours? The urge to show your lordship by harming the defenseless? Is there anything behind the big words, aside from a small, dismal robbery?
The Ahrar Center for Detainees Studies and Human Rights issued its monthly report, revealing that the Israeli army kidnapped 312 Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, and the besieged Gaza Strip.
Ahrar said the army carried out dozens of invasions into the occupied territories, kidnapping 312 Palestinians, mainly after breaking into their homes and properties, and violently searching them, causing excessive property damage.
Most of the arrests have been carried out in the Hebron District, as the soldiers kidnapped 94 Palestinians, followed by Jerusalem, 92, Nablus, 36, Bethlehem, 21, Jenin, 18, Ramallah, 16, Gaza Strip, 15 including 11 kidnapped near the border fence, Qalqilia, 10, Salfit, 7, Tulkarem, 2, and one in Tubas.
Ahrar added that the army kidnapped four Palestinian women in April, and released two of them later on.
Mariam Barghouthi, from Ramallah, and Samira al-‘Akel, from Hebron, are still imprisoned, while Tahani Abu Mayyala and Hanin Abu Aisha, from Hebron, were released.
“There are 21 Palestinian women who are still imprisoned by Israel,” Ahrar stated.
Head of the Ahrar Center, Fuad al-Khoffash, stated that April witnessed the beginning of one of the strongest hunger strikes by Administrative Detainees held with charge or trial, and that the detainees are determined to continue their strike.
Al-Khoffash added that the striking detainees are subject to constant attacks and harassment, in the attempt by authorities to force them to end their strike, while many have been moved into solitary confinement and are denied the right to family visits.
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces have blocked the main entrances to a southern West Bank village since Saturday night, locals said, impeding villagers’ ability to travel freely.
Aletho News
