Sunday, November 15, 2009

IDF Chief Rabbi: Troops who show mercy to enemy will be 'damned'


The Israel Defense Forces' chief rabbi told students in a pre-army yeshiva program last week that soldiers who "show mercy" toward the enemy in wartime will be "damned."
Speaking Thursday at the Hesder yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron , Rontzki referred to Maimonides' discourse on the laws of war. That text quotes a passage from the Book of Jeremiah stating: "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with a slack hand, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."
Haaretz
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"doeth the work of the Lord" !?
Oh! How I love this one!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Iraqi freedom coming through cancer and deformities


Antony Loewenstein
"Evidence of US war crimes in Iraq are almost too frequent to document. “Our” side is brutal and remains so. Back in 2006, I heard two speakers in Sydney explain the situation at that time and included were discussions of the use of napalm by the US in Fallujah.

So how to explain this?
"Doctors in Iraq’s war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja’s over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems – are unprecedented and at present unexplainable."

Claude Levi-Strauss on his visit to Israel

"Je suis allé une fois en Israël. J'ai dit à mes interlocuteurs que je les considérais comme les acteurs de la neuvième croisade. Ils m'ont répondu que c'était vrai, mais eux avaient amené leurs femmes. Pendant ce voyage en Israël, le seul endroit où je me sois vraiment senti chez moi est une église Franciscaine. A peine une chapelle, je crois."
Translation:
"I visited Israel once. I told people whom I talked to that I consider them as the actors/players in the ninth crusade. They said yes but unlike them we brought our women with us. During this visit the only place I felt at home was a Franciscan church. Hardly a chapel, I believe."
Claude Levi-Strauss passed away last week. A giant intellect, author of the groundbreaking 'Tristes Tropiques' ( Sad Tropics), an essay in Anthropology which researches the devastating impact of colonisation on the indigenous people of Brazil and the Caribeans. He's also considered as central figure of the Structuralist school of thought..

Best joke of the decade and probably the century!

Israel Seeks Fairness From ‘New York Times’
"I write in connection to a series of articles published in The New York Times in recent weeks regarding the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, colloquially referred to as the Goldstone Report. I am deeply concerned by the subjective and often damning language that The New York Times uses towards Israel as it fails to accurately reflect the nature and scope of the report."
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Very funny..

Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver :Morocco has more women in gov't than Israel

Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver speaks at Euro-Med conference on status of women held in Morocco, says Israel falls behind even some Arabs states with regards to number of female ministers in office
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What I find outrageous here is that Morocco has ties with the occupying state.

Israel 'personally attacking human rights group' after Gaza war criticism

The Guardian
America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) ties the campaign – which has included accusations that the group's reports on the Jewish state are written by "anti-Israel ideologues" and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia – to a statement by a senior official in the Israeli prime minister's office in June pledging to "dedicate time and manpower to combating" human rights organisations.

“Why can’t they”?

From the Angry Arab
I hate it when I hear American liberals say: why can't the Palestinians resort to peaceful resistance? Answer: 1) why is the Palestinian national movement the only movement that is asked to resort to non-violence? American liberals supported the struggle for blacks against apartheid without requesting or insisting that their struggle strictly adhere to non-violence. 2) the Palestinians largely stuck to peaceful struggle from 1948 to mid-1960s: and Israeli occupation troops killed thousands of Palestinian civilians who tried to peacefully enter Israel to check on their properties and houses (read the tally in Benny Morris' Righteous Victims). 3) some Palestinians still resort to non-violence, and Israel still manages to shoot at them: "Naalin: Protestors say IDF using live fire."

The Israel lobby and the Jewish kings

Philip Weiss
When people ask why Obama has capitulated to the prime minister of a tiny state– Bibi Netanyahu– various theories are offered about Health care first, or the economy, or Afghanistan, or oil. Few say directly: Netanyahu feels invulnerable because of the Israel lobby in the U.S. As readers of this site know, I am a bull on this issue: I think the lobby has a tremendous amount of power. And all efforts to poohpooh its influence strike me as foolish until such time as the media address it openly and vigorously, as they do, say, the gun lobby. Once there’s information and sunshine, we can argue about its magnitude.

Ynet: Israel in midst of freefall on global front

"A thorn in the world’s side"

"The current anti-Israel wave is particularly dangerous especially because it is not limited to the media and to leftist groups that traditionally were classified as “Israel haters.” This wave is rising, expending, drawing young people, and painting the perceptions of the well-established middle class and influential elites.
Israel’s image has hit a nadir; it is isolated, unwanted, and perceived as bad. The world is telling us that should we continue along the same contemptible path, we will lose our legitimacy."
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A lot of nonsense in the article too. Especially when he attributes the causes for a deteriorating "image" to the Netanyahoo govt conveniently overlooking the onslaught on Gaza.

Colonists attack school children


(School children from Twaneh school being accompanied by Israeli military)
"Sometimes they chase us with their horses, ride them at us and try to use them to hurt us. The horses are so fast we can't get away. It's very frightening. But they don't harass us nearly so much when the military are there."
Unfortunately, the patrol is not always reliable. Last Monday, Ali and the other children waited as they do every morning at 7am for their Israeli escorts but they didn't come. Eventually, they decided to walk the long way, a 12km detour around the settlements, which took them two hours.

Afghan war takes toll on US troops

A survey of US soldiers in Afghanistan has shown that troops facing three or more combat tours have higher rates of mental health and marital problems, the US army says.
AlJazeera English

How Eurocentric Is Your Day?


"At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course – on the history of the global economy – this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy.

This fall, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, How Eurocentric is your day? I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West – in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?"

"The White Man's Mess"

"Kipling may have been Poet to the Empire and its best apologist (or worst?). But having spent most of his life in Her Majesty’s Service in the Indian Sub-continent as a soldier and journalist, Kipling knew the redlines that were not to be crossed -- ever.

"It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.
At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the
Late deceased;
And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East "

Rachel Corrie 5th Grade Speech: "I'm here because I care

The Nation: ‘for all practical purposes, one nation between river and sea…’

"The American lib-left seems to be getting the news that the two-state-solution is having its death rattles (3 years of death rattles, unusual case doctor). Joe Klein wants sanctions. And here’s the Nation on the crumbling of the Palestinian Authority. It is unusual to read such a starkly-honest statement of the situation in even a liberal American publication. Roane Carey in the latest Nation:"
Mondoweiss

"Scary JPost columnist calls for one-state-solution"

Philip Weiss
I say that liberals have been shaken up by the failure of the two-state solution and are beginning to look at one-state ideas. Well, looky here, Caroline Glick, neocon in the Jerusalem Post:

"As Netanyahu knows, there is consensus support among Israelis for his plan to ensure that the country retains defensible borders in perpetuity. This involves establishing permanent Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and the large Jewish population blocs in Judea and Samaria. In light of the well-recognized failure of the two-state solution [horse feathers edited cause I just ate my dinner] … Israel should strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population, into Israeli society. In the first instance, this will require the implementation of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement blocs."
Mondoweiss
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Yup! The one-state solution as the neofascists understand the concept!

Yossi Sarid / Abbas must unilaterally declare Palestinian state

"When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions. David Ben-Gurion would not have been upset by such a pretty act of plagiarism from his Declaration of Independence."
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If I got this correctly, once a Palestinian state is declared Sarid believes the colonists and their colonies should "help" to build the new country?!! In other words, they're there to stay!! HA!
Sure! Why not? Anything else for your service, you all??

Friday, November 13, 2009

Top U.S. official: We won't accept partial settlement freeze

The United States does not accept continued Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, a senior U.S. state department official has said, adding that Jerusalem's commitment to restrain settlement activity is not enough.
"We consider the Israeli offer to restrain settlement activity to be a potentially important step, but it obviously falls short of the continuing Road map obligation for a full settlement freeze," he said.
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Sure..but as far as Israel is concerned, it's like what the French would say: Parles a mon cul, ma tete est malade! (Talk to my arse, my head is ill).

John Pilger: Breaking the great Australian silence

In a speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, John Pilger describes the "unique features" of a political silence in Australia: how it affects the national life of his homeland and the way Australians see the world and are manipulated by great power "which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war - against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else's country".
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BTW, the Israeli deputy PM is bringing his ass over here and will be welcomed by Kevin Rudd himself! A protest is organised at 11 am Thurs. 3 dec, Martin Place. Let's give this sh..gentleman the welcome he deserves..

Mike Luckovich: If you're in a hole...

Road restrictions for West Bank Palestinians


Roads in the occupied Palestinian Territories are vital arteries connecting West Bank towns and villages.

But major routes have been closed off to tens of thousands of Palestinians, for the benefit of a handful of Israeli settlers.

Now, in the first ruling of its kind, Israel's supreme court has ordered the army to open up a West Bank highway to Palestinian traffic again.

Nicole Johnston reports from the occupied West Bank.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Israel wants answers from Solomon Islands over UN vote

An imaginary dialogue:
Israel: What the hell is going on with you?
Solomon Islands: What happened to my check?
Israel : The US is saying it's in the mail!
Solomon Islands: Ah! Well, it's a bit late now, init?
Iran: Hi Sol! Everything is ok?

Steve Johnson calls and makes a mockery of Israeli deceit and their Christian Zionist goons

Bendib cartoon

Influence of Egypt and Saudi Arabia Fades

"With Israel having rebuffed American calls to freeze settlement-building, and with the prospects for substantive peace talks fading, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are increasingly viewed in the region as diminished actors whose influence is on the wane, political experts say."

I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

"Rolling Stone magazine ran a story that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money".
Times online

Sarkozy caught lying on Facebook. Claims to have helped knock down the Berlin Wall

The only slight fly in the ointment is that Sarkozy wasn’t actually there. Some French newspapers are saying he didn’t get there until the 16th. The photographer who took the photo in question says it was snapped on the 10th.

The New 'Jihadi Code' Threatens Al Qaeda

"The code's most direct challenge to al Qaeda is this: "Jihad has ethics and morals because it is for God. That means it is forbidden to kill women, children, elderly people, priests, messengers, traders and the like. Betrayal is prohibited and it is vital to keep promises and treat prisoners of war in a good way. Standing by those ethics is what distinguishes Muslims' jihad from the wars of other nations."
The code has been circulated among some of the most respected religious scholars in the Middle East and has been given widespread backing. It is being debated by politicians in the U.S. and studied by western intelligence agencies."

Gorbachev Says Obama Should Start Afghan Withdrawal

(Bloomberg) -- Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, drawing on his experience of military failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the U.S. can’t win the conflict there and should begin pulling out its soldiers.

US nuclear team 'ready' in Pakistan

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the US has a rapid-response unit ready to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the event of a mutiny or "any nuclear incident"

Why the Goldstone report was rejected by the US

Firstly, if Israel is guilty of committing systematic war crimes across Gaza and the West Bank, then the US, which supported, funded and armed Israel during the war, is an accessory to those crimes.

Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama?

The Economist
Mr Netanyahu, on the other hand, was cock-a-hoop. The right-wing and religious ministers who make up the bulk of his coalition government can scarcely believe his luck. The prime minister is riding high in the Israeli people’s esteem. Building work is proceeding apace in many of the settlements( Why not colonies, dear economist?) He looks as if he has emerged unscathed from a brush with a hostile American president.

Bill O'Reilly: We Should Win Hearts and Minds Because "We Can't Kill All The Muslims"


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Yeah unfortunately you can't!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

French foreign Minister: 'Israelis no longer aspire to peace'

Israelis appear to have lost their desire for peace, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared on Tuesday, a day ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
"Before, there was a great peace movement" among Israelis, Kouchner told France-Inter radio. "It seems to me that this aspiration has disappeared."

Ali AbuNimah: Israeli Jews and the one-state solution

... does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on "pragmatic" solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

The experience in South Africa suggests otherwise. In 1994, white-minority rule -- apartheid -- came to a peaceful, negotiated end, and was replaced (after a transitional period of power-sharing) with a unitary democratic state with a one person, one vote system. Before this happened, how likely did this outcome look? Was there any significant constituency of whites prepared to contemplate it, and what if the African National Congress (ANC) had only advanced political solutions that whites told pollsters they would accept?
Until close to the end of apartheid, the vast majority of whites, including many of the system's liberal critics, completely rejected a one person, one vote system, predicting that any attempt to impose it would lead to a bloodbath. As late as 1989, F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid president, described a one person, one vote system as the "death knell" for South Africa.
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A great article and an eye opener.

Why does Hassan hate us?

Philip Weiss
"Blaming radical Islam is imprecise and not very helpful either. So long as everyone’s speculating, why overlook the Palestinian angle? Hassan is of Palestinian descent, and his parents were from a village near Jerusalem. He isn’t talking, according to news reports, but I’m betting that when we know his mind better, he will prove to have been unhinged not just by American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, but by American policy in Israel/Palestine– and maybe even by the events of last week, Obama’s wretched failure to follow through on his promise in Cairo to bring justice to Palestinians."
Mondoweiss

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Israeli universities

"The idea that Israeli universities adhere to the values of free academic institutions, where academic freedom, objectivity and meritocracy prevail is widely accepted in the West. From our experience we attest – and indeed prove beyond doubt - that this is not the case. In recent years Israeli universities have changed the criteria of acceptance to various faculties in order - as a certain president of an Israeli university put it - to prevent large number of undesirable [i.e. Arab] students from attending prestigious faculties such as Medicine and Natural Sciences. Moreover, lecturers who presented findings which are at odd with the official ideology – such as Ilan Pappe and Neve Gordon – are bullied and harassed or forced to resign."
The Angry Arab

Weapons in ship to Hizbullah was a hoax!

From the Angry Arab:
"Notice that Israeli media and their Zionist allies in the US media have not been making any noise about the so-called shipment of weapons from Iran to Hizbullah. Even the New York Times which covers sneezes of Israeli occupation soldiers have been mum about. This update is from a source in the Lebanese Arm who does not want to be identified: "in case you saw the photos of the lebanese navy searching the alleged weapons' ship, the officer in the pictures is...a...officer. He told me that, after interviewing the ship's crew, the army is completely convinced that Israel faked the thing and that the ship had no weapons on it.

They never sleep!

"The Israel Lobby never sleeps. Who can keep up with them? Notice that J Street endorsed a Kucinich statement during the Gaza war. And Kucinich was on the host committee of J Street’s Gala. But AIPAC doesn’t like him a bit, and neither does Ted Deutch, who spoke at AIPAC and has ambitions for Robert Wexler’s old seat. Palm Beach Post:
..."U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich lasted less than 24 hours as headliner for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner after some of the party’s elected officials blasted the Ohio Democrat’s stance on Israel and threatened to skip the event….""
Mondoweiss

Kucinich dropped for being critical of Israel

The Palm Beach Democratic Party dropped Rep. Dennis Kucinich as the keynote speaker at their fundraiser after objections that he is too critical of Israel. County Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel, who had invited the Ohio Congressman, explained:

"People feel he’s anti-Israel. I don’t read it that way, but the leadership of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other elements of the Jewish community do and I don’t want to get into an argument with them."
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Who said that AIPAC is holding the Congress by the balls? That is not true! They have no balls!

Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker ( the Guardian.UK) investigates whether the 'independent' media institute (MEMRI) that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems.
"The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin."

Victim of white phosphorous Farah abu Halima is on her way to California from Gaza


The heartbreaking story of this little girl is on Mondoweiss

Mr Fish: Tear down this wall.

WALL STREET BANKS GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE FOR H1N1 SHOTS

"With millions who need the the H1N1 vaccine unable to get it, major financial firms in New York, among them Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have received larger distributions of the inoculation than many hospitals.

As of late October, Citigroup had been given 1,200 doses, more than half of its request, and Goldman Sachs had received 200 doses of the 5,400 it requested, about 4 percent.

By contrast, a major New York City hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has been given only 200 of 27,400 doses, less than 1 percent of what it asked for its doctors, nurses, and staff, who will be responsible for caring for the sick in the event of a major outbreak.
(not in his name)

A zionist trick: change the subject

The recent controversy over the Toronto Film Festival attempting to white-wash Israeli crimes in Palestine appears to be a plan cooked up by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Rule number one: whenever the occupation is mentioned, change the subject. Or better still, deny the occupation even exists:
Antony Loewenstein

Colonists!

I've noticed that on Mondoweiss, a blog where the blogger, Philip Weiss, and his readers are mostly Jewish Americans no one writes 'settlers' but 'colonists' and instead of 'settlements', 'colonies'..I used to find this word, while perfectly befitting, a bit awkward sounding at first. Not anymore..I'm getting used to it..Good bye settlers, hey! Colonists!

‘apartheid is here’

It looks like a tidal wave now and more people are speaking out:
Yediot Ahronot's ( Israel's largest-circulation daily) legal affairs editor: Apartheid is here

"Israel's apartheid is worse than South Africa's"

By Yitzhak Laor (Haaretz)
The system preserving this apartheid is more ruthless than that seen in South Africa, where the black were a labor force and could therefore also make a living. It is equipped with the lie of being "temporary." Occasionally, Israel's indifference comes up with allegations against the Palestinians.

Monday, November 9, 2009

At a Sabbath dinner in Jerusalem, a Jew is sickened by racism

"So, does my Shabbat dinner sound like an echo of Nazi Germany? You tell me, or, more important, tell yourself."
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Oh, I don't need to tell myself. The picture is crystal clear.

Akiva Eldar: The Israeli perversion

"The attitude of the average Israeli on the issue of the settlements is one of the effects of a chronic illness threatening the existence of the Jewish State: an inability to walk in the shoes, even for a minute, of their neighbor."

No Arabs need apply: Study shows that Arabs, Ethiopians, and Haredis can't find work - even with a degree

Otherwise yeah, it's a democratic state bla bla with equal rights to all citizens as long as they're pure jews.

Study: Israeli employers prefer not to hire Arabs
Haaretz

Obama reaffirms 'strong commitment' to Israel's security

Code name for 'Go ahead! do as you please'

Maariv: Israel is the party sabotaging negotiations

In a column examining the Netanyahu-Obama meeting farce, Ben Caspit, a senior political-diplomatic commentator in Maariv, Israel’s second largest circulation daily, asserts that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Israel is the one holding up negotiations with the PA.
"Apparently, Netanyahu’s people are simply not interested (in the peace process). Publicly, they call to start negotiations without preconditions, but discreetly, they thwart any attempt to hold such negotiations. As of now, they are succeeding."

Helena Cobban's travel to the ME

First impressions from Beirut
On the political front, the most significant things I heard were:

(a) Loud condemnation of the statement Hillary Clinton made in Jerusalem Saturday evening, when she lauded PM Netanyahu for having made “unprecedented concessions” on the settlements issue and urged the Palestinians to resume negotiations without preconditions; and

(b) An account from former longtime UNIFIL official Timur Goksel of how many of the small arms now pouring into Lebanon are brand-new US weapons that are smuggled here from Iraq. The presumed provenance of these weapons is via the US’s large-scale handouts of weapons to former Sunni insurgents under the “Sons of Iraq” and “Awakening” programs. It is really depressing to see the damaging effects of so many US decisions regarding Iraq still reverberating throughout the region.
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There you go!!

Hamas Leader Open to Future Relations with Israel

During a two-hour meeting with the CNI delegation in Damascus yesterday, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, told us:

It is not just to ask Palestinians to amend their charters without real change on the ground. Let us get our rights. Then we could discuss many issues, such as changing the Hamas and PLO charters or relations with Israel.

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We knew that already but Israel prefers much more the idea of that Hamas charter calling for Israel's total destruction..It was proven to increase the "sales" within Israel and abroad....

West Bank rabbi: Jews can kill Gentiles who threaten Israel (and even those who "sin")

Now this is lovely! Absolutely lovely!

"Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book "The King's Torah" that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.
Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.
"It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," he wrote, adding: "If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."

Several prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Yithak Ginzburg and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, have recommended the book to their students and followers.
Haaretz

The (Financial) Times, they are achangin'

This article in the Financial Times where words such as "colonisation" "Apartheid" "South Africa" are used and evoked..
If a figure such as Mr Abbas cannot survive in the present climate, then he is likely to be replaced by a far more radical and uncompromising leadership. No Palestinian leader can or will negotiate while Israeli colonisation of the West Bank continues. Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to call a halt to expanding settlements means in effect there will be no two-state solution.

If that is so, then the prospect is for a long and bitter fight for equal rights within one state. That would spell the end of Israel as a democratic Jewish state. It would come to resemble in many ways the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. If Mr Netanyahu believes that he has achieved a victory by refusing to halt the settlements, he is wrong. It is more like a project of national suicide.

Definitely a change of tone everywhere..(well, almost(.

Is using aid to Israel as leverage becoming a mainstream idea?

First there's Tom Friedman:
.........."If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us."
Then there's Time's Joe Klein:
"It should start by putting a hold on all economic and military aid to Israel; the aid should not be discontinued, just held, for a nice long review until the Netanyahu government comes to understand that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine, and that if you actually want peace, you don't build illegal settlement colonies in the Palestinian capital."
When is the last time there were serious discussions like this in the establishment media about cutting off aid to Israel if they refused to cease taking actions that harmed American interests?

Nilin marking 20 years to the fall of the berlin wall by taking down the wall on their land

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Avnery: Abbas feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama.

MAHMOUD ABBAS is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority.

I understand him.

He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama.

A YEAR ago, when Obama was elected, he aroused high hopes in the Muslim world, among the Palestinian people as well as in the Israeli peace camp.

At long last an American president who understood that he had to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only for the sake of the two peoples, but mainly for the US national interests. This conflict is largely responsible for the tidal waves of anti-American hatred that sweep the Muslim masses from ocean to ocean.
Uri Avnery

With a little help from friends

Israeli physicists supply solar and wind power to Palestinian herders
Electricity cables run above their homes and nearby pylons supply the Israeli settlement with power, but the Palestinian farmers and their families have been denied access to electricity, running water and other infrastructure.

The villagers have been denied use of the settlers-only bypass road, and prevented from accessing much of their farm and grazing land except for a few days a year in coordination with the Israeli military. This land has been appropriated by the settlers.

Israeli physicist Elad Orian together with fellow physicist Noam Dotan, both pro-peace activists and founders of Comet-ME, have spent the last two years installing a high-grid wind and solar system free of charge in Susya.

Israel's anti-Semitic friends

Tony Greenstein
The European political establishment, like its American counterpart, has taken to the idea that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are indistinguishable. According to the European Union's Working Definition, anti-Semitism includes: denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor), drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, and holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel. It is ironic that the EU's definition of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic!....

"Therefore, it is not surprising that today, with the growth of far right and neo-fascist parties in Europe, that almost without exception they are pro-Israel. Thus, the very people who criticize anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters as anti-Semitic are rushing to hold the hands of Zionism's far-right supporters.
For example Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ron Prossor was more than happy to share a platform at the Conservative Friends of Israel with Michal Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party. Kaminski is notorious in Poland for openly opposing the call for an official apology for the 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne."
The Electronic Intifada

Book review: "A World I Loved"


"This is my story, the story of an Arab woman," Wadad Makdisi Cortas states in the opening line of her memoir A World I Loved. Born Wadad Makdisi in Beirut in 1909, which at that time was considered a part of Syria, she discovered Arab nationalism at a young age and lived a life true to the idea in every sense. Cortas, born a Greek Orthodox Christian, believed passionately that Arabs, in order to protect their culture and values, should liberate themselves from Western colonialism which sought to impose its ways and divide the people.

J Street conference only step one

Max Ajl, The Electronic Intifada, 4 November 2009
AIPAC was recently shoved unceremoniously out of the closet by scholars Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, with their broadside against the role of the "Israel Lobby" in distorting the functioning of US foreign policy.
Enter J Street, its name is a riff on K Street, the real Washington, DC address of many powerful lobbying firms. With a staff of 30 and a budget of millions, it has set itself up as the liberal alternative to AIPAC.

Why I'm not a Zionist


"I have been mistaken for Italian, Puerto Rican, Arab and Muslim, but I am a suburban Jew who sought out hip-hop cultural space across red lines and Chicago segregation. I learned borders are to be contended and crossed. Israel believes in borders. Israel practices apartheid. On one side, irrigated lawns and swimming pools in illegal Israeli settlements. On the other side, Palestinian disenfranchisement, denied access to drinking water, medical assistance, jobs, the ability to earn an income or vote in the country that governs them, that limits their movement with passports, checkpoints and curfews and closes them into open-air prisons. I cannot be in favor of these practices, nor the state that enacts them. These practices are to be resisted, protested and pushed against. Those whose bodies are legislated against, contained, detained and maimed by state-sanctioned terror are to be stood with and listened to."

Community leader talks: “I couldn’t get through to him"

“So many times I talked with him,” said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. “I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.”
Despite all the conversations, Akther said, “I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.”
(Thanks vza)

Soldiers and settlers violate Palestinian women's rights

"Palestinian women have regularly been attacked and assaulted by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank where they are often the only persons at home during the day as men are at work.
The women and their children have been shoved, stoned and shot at or have had tear gas canisters thrown into their homes while Israeli soldiers looked on and did nothing to stop the settlers.
The Electronic Intifada

BDS:Sussex University students vote to boycott Israeli goods

Students at the University of Sussex, England have voted to boycott Israeli goods. The decision follows the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, which calls upon the Israeli state to respect international law and end the occupation of Palestine.
The Electronic Intifada

Lebensraum a l'Israelienne!

“The State of Israel must invent dangers, and to do this, it must adopt methods of provocation and revenge. And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.”
Moshe Sharret, Israeli prime minister's diary (1954-56)
(Some contend that it's Moshe Dayan's. Sharret was merely quoting. Either way it's eloquent!)

Saturday, November 7, 2009

When is war justified? Afghanistan-9/11?

Every war begins with a lie. In addition to Saddam = WMD, I'm old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the war in Vietnam, based on a fictional Vietnamese gunboat attack on our Navy. (White House recordings have Lyndon Johnson gloating privately, "Hell, those damn stupid [US] sailors were just shooting at flying fish.")