Haiti death toll estimate now 230,000

The government initially estimated 150,000 dead on Jan. 24, apparently from bodies being recovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, the capital that was near the epicenter.

French accuse Tony Blair of ‘Soviet-style' propaganda in run-up to Iraq war

Tony Blair was accused by the French government of “Soviet-style” black propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war, secret memos obtained by the Iraq inquiry have found.

Steven Walt: I don't mean to say I told you so, but...

Blair acknowledged that Israel was part of the equation on invading Iraq, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.

If Gandhi had been in Palestine, he’d probably be undergoing torture now

Stop the Wall offices hit in late night raid
Late last night Occupation forces raided the Stop the Wall offices in Ramallah. Some 10 military jeeps, hummers and an armoured bus surrounded the building as soldiers searched rooms, turning the office upside down and confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes.

12 arrested for disrupting Israeli ambassador

Twelve people were arrested Monday evening during a raucous lecture at UC Irvine where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations.
Oren was interrupted 10 times Monday while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.
(Thanks Legal)

AP Article Fuels Iran War Hysteria

Article Speculates Medical Uranium Enrichment a Weapons Plot
In a widely-circulated article which has further fueled Western hysteria about the prospect of an imminent war with Iran, the Associated Press today claimed that Iran’s uranium enrichment program move, an effort to produce medical isotopes which are rapidly running out in the nation, was a secret plot to build nuclear weapons.

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit.
Der Spiegel

Rep. Mike Pence: Israel should dictate U.S. policy

Matt Duss flagged this video of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana), a senior member of the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about why he unquestioningly supports Israel.
Pence is literally saying,

"Israeli officials should tell us what they want us to do, and we'll support it."

Mustafa Barghouthi Nominated for 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

“I have pleasure in nominating Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. I am inspired by the life and work of Dr. Barghouthi whose commitment to nonviolence, in his personal and public life, is truly in the Ghandian spirit", stated in her letter to the Nobel Committe, Maired Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Co-founder of the Peace People (Northern Ireland). Mairead Maguire today announced her nomination of Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

WILL PEACE BE THE DEATH OF ISRAEL OR THE DEATH OF THE ISRAELI RIGHT?

"The right, meanwhile, wants to wall off Israel as the world’s last remaining legally mandated Jewish ghetto. A place where all the rules are different, exit and entry, citizenship and human rights, because the residents within are Jews. A place where non-Jews, dehumanized as congenital Jew-haters, are rendered invisible. A place which, if suffocating and insufferable, still seems safer than the scary world outside."

(SOME) JEWS CONTINUE TO SAY ‘NO!’

Jewish Anti-Occupation Activists Send Forceful Message to Israel
By Alex Kane
"“Too often, Jews are seen as supporters of Israel. We’re here to say that not all Jews support what Israel is doing in the West Bank, in Gaza, and inside Israel,” said Hannah Mermelstein, an activist with Adalah NY who recently returned from Palestine."

PACBI Issues Open Letter to Bono: “Entertaining Apartheid Israel…U 2 Bono? “

Dear Bono,

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)was deeply disturbed to learn that that you are scheduled to perform in Israel this coming summer. Two years ago, you were invited by Israeli President Shimon Peres to attend a conference in Israel marking Israel‘s contributions to medicine, science, and conservation; we urged you then, as a prominent activist on issues of global inequality and a campaigner for basic human rights, to say no to Israel, especially since the invitation coincided with celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state.[1] You did not go to Israel then; we call on you now not to grant legitimacy to a state that practices the most pernicious form of colonialism and apartheid.

The Israeli-US Unbreakable Relations

Far from denouncing Israel’s violence and Nazi-like brutality, both the lame-duck Bush administration and the succeeding Obama administration watched the grisly massacres as if they were taking place on a different plant.

It was rumored a few years ago that the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a certified war criminal by any standard of honesty and fairness, told Shimon Peres, who reportedly objected to Israeli measures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that he (Peres) should never worry about American pressure on Israel.

Sharon told him, “We control the United States, and the Americans know it.”

Israeli circles long denied the authenticity of the statement. However, it is amply clear that Sharon, who is now lying comatose for the fourth year, did not go too far in describing the unique American-Israeli relation.
(Desert Peace)

One question for the New York Times

"If only one reporter for the New York Times would, for purposes of an experiment, announces that he/she has a son who has joined Hamas or Hizbullah forces, we would like then to see if Bill Keller would make the arguments that he has made regarding Ethan Bronner's son. I mean, Mr. Keller. Who are you kidding? Do you really think that one believes that you are invoking some abstract (non-political) principle here?"
(the Angry Arab)

The Angry Arab gets the most dubious of honors

What do you do when you are mentioned in the blog of the worst writer on the Middle East in the entire world? I mean, that. You need to research this website and see what I have written about this man: Jeffrey Goldberg, who proudly served in the Israeli occupation forces. The man was an occupation jailer of the inhabitants and owners of the land of Palestine....."

"There is an old Arabic saying by `Ali Bin Abi Talib in Nahju Al-Balaghah which says: I have never argued with a reasonable man and did not defeat him, but I never argued with an ignorant man who did not defeat me. So I would in no way argue with somebody whose Middle East training amounts to training in the Israeli occupation army. As for the charge of zealotry: I stand guilty. I am a zealot when it comes to secularism, women's right, reason, the belief in sciences and not quackery, the belief in the abolishment of capitalism and the end of poverty, the principled opposition to Zionism in all its deadly forms (paper forms or land forms), the belief in the goal of liberating all of Palestine and the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes, the belief in socialism and in anarchist critiques of the state--the state in itself. On all those principles I am a zealot--proudly. With somebody who volunteered in an occupation army and who served as a jailer for the natives of the land, there should be no arguments. Trials would be in order, not arguments. (thanks Olivia)"

I'm reposting this because we have someone here with a short attention span and possibly, even certainly, a severe comprehension problem

Desmond Travis (co-author of the Goldstone report): Israel created the myth of Hamas using human shields
Interview:
Desmond Travis – We found no evidence for the human shield phenomenon but, to be honest, I did expect to come across it.
HC – So who made these allegations (against Hamas) in the first place?
DT – The Israelis.
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I hope this will do though I doubt it..But hell! We can always try!

UK academics write to Elton John: please don't play in Israel

From the British Committee for Universities for Palestine (BRICUP), Feb. 2010:
OPEN LETTER TO ELTON JOHN

Like much of the world, we think you’re a good bloke. You came out when it was difficult; you admitted your addictions were stronger than you were; you’ve poured money into AIDS research. Oh, and then there’s the music – not bad at all.

But we’re struggling to understand why you’re playing in Israel on June 17. You may say you’re not a political person, but does an army dropping white phosphorus on a school building full of children demand a political response? Does walling a million and a half people up in a ghetto and then pounding that ghetto to rubble require a political response from us, or a human one?
Jews sans Frontieres

How a Murdoch owned paper see the war on Gaza

Click to enlarge..(Better not if your sense of smell is acute)

Peace Propaganda and the Promised Land

(thanks Legal)

How Two Jewish Publishers (The NYT and the WPOST) Who Privately Opposed Zionism Folded

In her 1997 autobiography, the late Katharine Graham of the Washington Post described her father as an assimilating Jew who didn't talk about his Jewishness to his Episcopal-church-going children. He was "involved in Jewish charities, causes, and international issues. "He was not a Zionist, however, believing strongly that he was an American citizen first and foremost." That's odd. Her father, the financier Eugene I. Meyer Jr., who bought the Washington Post in the 1930s, is a figure in Zionist history.
(thanks vza)

US media

Washington sets its eyes on taking Iraq forever

"If you believed that America was permanently removing itself from controlling Iraq, think again:

"The State Department plans major increases in its Iraq mission, with hundreds more employees there and a stepped-up diplomatic presence outside Baghdad as the U.S. military prepares to leave later this year.

A new fiscal 2010 supplemental request asks for $2.1 billion for use in Iraq, the bulk going to set up two permanent consulates and three temporary “Provincial Development Teams.” The funding will enable another 129 State Department positions in Iraq, bringing the total to 664 by the end of this fiscal year. One consulate will be in Basra, one in northern Iraq. The PDTs will be along the Arab-Kurd fault line near Kirkuk, Ninewa, and Diyala, and $735 million in the supplemental request is designated for the security needed to protect civilians in the new outposts. The new presence around Iraq is described in the budget request as crucial “to mitigate ethno-sectarian conflict, to minimize the risk of instability, and to seize strategic policy opportunities.”"

In other words, the occupation will continue indefinitely."

West Bank rabble rousers should be forced to see Avatar

The film "Avatar" is about a corporate research expedition to a planet called Pandora, where a god is found different than ours, a "green" universal deity of which flora and fauna are a part, a god we once knew and today perhaps are lacking.

The beginning of the concept of the commandment to worship one god is attributed to the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt during the 14th century BCE. He instituted a new religion based on one god, Aten, who was the light revealed by the sun. Akhenaten did away with the family of gods and cut Aten off from the biological cycle of birth, sexuality and death, because he did not want him to be subject to the system of laws that preceded him. To these characteristics, Moses added the separation between the deity and the world and nature. The deity is not part of nature, but created it and rules it at will, for or against humankind.

"Avatar" ostensibly takes us one step backward and returns the deity to nature. Eywa, the goddess of the inhabitants of Pandora, is nature. This concept is condescendingly decribed nowadays as primitive, but it is this concept that maintains the system of laws that allows every component in nature to exist. It is about a culture that shows personal and communal responsibility because it recognizes the right of the other and the different to live. This culture makes do with the fulfillment of its basic physical and spiritual needs (the "greenest" law of all) based on the deep understanding of the interdependence of all components of existence.
In contrast to the inhabitants of Pandora, humans renounce their responsibility to preserve the thin line of the earth's climate that allows their existence. Believers among them pin their hopes on God, who supposedly rules nature, and assume that God sustains the earth in exchange for their "worship." However, others believe that technology will create a bubble of human existence in engineered colonies in the heart of the earth, when natural conditions no longer allow the human race to exist on the surface.
Eywa's ability to subdue the powers of the corporation - which is trying to destroy her with its technological superiority - by calling on all living things linked by trillions of connections, exhibits her power in all its magnitude. Eywa does not do this because she has taken a side - to fight the invaders from earth - but because they chose to disrupt Pandora's harmony and equilibrium of nature.

This is not an earthly deity granting grace only to his believers and raining down fire and brimstone on the "heretics" of the other faith. Rather, this is a god that promises that balance of everything will not be impaired and gives the value of universalism unimaginable depth - far beyond the notions of this or that group of believers on earth. There is no "Chosen People," "Messiah Son of God" or "Last Prophet" on Pandora, but rather the sum total of life.

Thus Avatar becomes a must-see in rehabilitation programs for people who set fire to synagogues, churches and mosques, desecrate graves and smash ancient statues. It's also a must-see for those who still believe that "we must save the earth" and do not understand that it will continue to survive even after we have destroyed its ability to provide us with the necessary conditions for survival.

If the security forces try to prosecute the rabble-rousers who hide behind the term "price tag" - war on the rule of law and the decisions of elected institutions via "pogroms" on Palestinians and their property - I would recommend that they be required, as part of their punishment, to view "Avatar" every day.
Haaretz

UN likely to refer Goldstone findings to The Hague

The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York said on Saturday.

A decision to bring the report on last year's Gaza war before the court would follow a debate in the UN General Assembly over Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's response to the document last week.

“You can’t eradicate poverty whilst you have an occupation”

By Katya Reed, from the occupied West Bank
“You can have development under an occupation but you can’t eradicate poverty.” That thought-provoking statement came from John Prideaux-Brune, Oxfam GB’s Country Director for Israel and the OPTs, during the interview I conducted with him January 12 in his office in East Jerusalem.

Prideaux-Brune explained that impoverishment is now widely recognized to be a condition where one is denied control over one’s life. Poverty is about being denied a voice. “You can be the richest person in the world but if you have no voice you are still in poverty,” he said.

Bronner, the NYT, the sequel

Too Close to Home
The New York Times
LATE last month, a Web site called the Electronic Intifada reported that Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief of The Times, has a son in the Israeli military. Others, including Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watchdog group, demanded to know if it was true and, if so, why it did not create an unacceptable conflict of interest for Bronner and The Times.
Bronner occupies one of journalism’s hottest seats, covering the intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. As the top correspondent for America’s most influential newspaper, everything he writes is examined microscopically for signs of bias. Web sites like the Angry Arab News Service have called him a propagandist for Israel. I have received hundreds of messages heatedly contending the opposite: that his coverage is slanted against Israel. Sometimes the “evidence” is a single word in one news article. Sometimes it is his “failure” to show how one side or the other is solely to blame for what is happening.
The editor
(thanks Legal)
---------------
My take on this is simple. As far as I'm concerned, the NYT, roughly, is a Jewish paper and as such I do not have a problem with it. My only problem is that it's not mentioned anywhere at the top of the paper and this is very misleading.

Evo Morales of Bolivia champions gender equality at the highest levels of government

LA PAZ, Bolivia – After reinventing Bolivia's government to reflect the country's multi-ethnic, Indian majority, President Evo Morales is championing gender parity at the highest levels of government.

Women now account for half of Bolivia's Cabinet ministers — 10 out of 20 — as Morales embarks on his second term following his Jan. 22 swearing-in ceremony.

Why Costa Rica scores well on the happiness index

Costa Rica - green and happy?

The NYT caught in a lie.

NY Times misquotes UN document, says that UN chief “praised” the Israeli response to Goldstone and that "Israel followed up on every allegation". But the quote is from Israel's own document appended to the release. What Moon said is that no determination can yet be made as to Israel's compliance.

"The Hasbara Buster " coins two terms.. Which one is it?

The Hasbara Buster (see blogroll) is an excellent "another" anti-Zionist blog. In one post where he probes the racism that many Israelis( Settlers but not only) seem to enjoy wallowing in, he's wondering how to name this general feeling symetrical in its outlines/congruent to that of Anti-Semitism, towards the "others". "Anti-Gentilism"? "Goyophobia"? I made the humble suggestion, in a comment, of 'Semito-Fascism'. Am I off the mark, off the rails here? I wish Joe (and others) could be of a little help..

" Hitler was right ! Go back to the camps!" shout hard core Israelis at Jewish peace activists

Friday 25-12-09, about 250 demonstrators were walking and drumming down Hanevi'im st. in Jerusalem, as part of a non- violent demonstration against the occupation of Palestinian houses by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian Neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah (in East Jerusalem). These are some of the responses they encountered on the way.

Haiti: The corporate vultures circle

"The morning after the earthquake, when the Red Cross released its first estimates of as many as 50,000 dead, the Globe and Mail ran an editorial advising the international community to “rethink its efforts in Haiti”. In particular, the editors of Canada’s leading newspaper agreed “a larger focus” on garment manufacturing in Haiti “could help the economy grow”. In this, the editors concluded, “Wealthy neighbours like the U.S. and Canada have a special responsibility” and “Canada can play a leading role”.[iii]

Such talk of sweatshops might seem more than a little garish the morning after such a disaster, but this was hardly the first time Haiti had been targeted for such "sweatshop development" and foreign players are obviously eager to turn the exponential increase in the bitterness of Haitian existence into profitable lemonade."

Iraq to sue U.S., Britain over depleted uranium bombs

Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.

According to Iraqi military experts, the U.S. and Britain bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war.
-----------------
Gaza is another victim of Israeli depleted uranium..Desmond Travis describes the land as dead, the water thoroughly contaminated.

Dubai Police May Seek Netanyahu's Arrest Over Assassination

Dubai Police warned that if it is proven that Mossad is behind the assassination of Hamas commander (in Dubai last month), they will seek an international arrest warrant against Israeli PM Netanyahu

Desmond Travers: Israel created the myth of Hamas using human shields

Interview:Travers – We found no evidence for the human shield phenomenon but, to be honest, I did expect to come across it.
HC – So who made these allegations (against Hamas) in the first place?
DT – The Israelis.
HC – But if they weren’t co-operating, how did they tell you about it?
DT – It was in the media reports. They made no formal statements. Here’s a little thing nobody has ever raised and I want you to think about this. There were functionaries in combat uniform and in civilian attire, Arab speaking, operating in Gaza. These were Israeli combat troops specially trained to operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in civilian attire. They worked as ‘franc-tireurs’ (literally “free shooters”) and could have been in a position to cause confusion among the population. It is for this reason that if there was evidence of Hamas intimidation of any kind, it would have been necessary for me, an investigator, to determine by identification who the perpetrators were.
The Israelis themselves have admitted it; if you go to military websites, there are reams of stuff about special Israeli combat troops trained to work in the West Bank and in Gaza infiltrating into the area and working behind the scenes before, during and after the actual ground invasion. What I’m saying to you is, if somebody tells me there is a Hamas operative doing something on some street corner I have to ask, can you identify him for me because, we don’t know.

Desmond Travers ( co-author of the Goldstone report) : The IDF regularly used the human shield tactic

...the Israelis had got a 59 year old man and made him go into this house where there were three Hamas operatives in hiding, repeatedly, because they wouldn’t go in themselves. This human shield tactic, known among the IDF soldiers as the “Johnny” or “Good Neighbour” tactic brings me to another point. It was practiced and applied in all the Israeli brigade areas in Gaza and is strongly indicative of prior training. It does, however, also reveal an emphasis in that training on “risk aversion”. This aversion in turn imposed the transference of such risk onto the civilian population be they women or children. This is very troubling for various reasons but one in particular to me, an ex-soldier, and it is this: What is an army that commits its soldiers to avoidance of risk? Whatever it is now, it is no longer an army, in my view.
----------------
Exactly, no longer an army, but a bunch of cowardly thugs.

Disgrace unto the Nations

"Jewish community leaders who are worried sick with the thought that the suffering of the people of Gaza might be somewhat eased, petition their Congresswoman against it."
(Jews Sans Frontieres)
--------------------
And it worked!

Some perspective

"The extent to which [the Balfour Declaration of Nov 1917] outraged Arab opinion was hardly anticipated in London, where the principal motive, apart from a certain Biblical romanticism, was plainly strategic".
"A declaration of support for international Zionism would rally American Jewish opinion to the British cause, and perhaps prop up Kerensky's falling regime in Russia. But chiefly it would establish a new pro-British state, guaranteeing the safety of the Suez Canal from a north-eastern attack. It would provide an unbroken chain of British command from Egypt to the Persian Gulf (through which area an oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa was built in 1934)." (G.D. Clayton, 'Britain and the Eastern Question',1971, p.220.)

Quote of the day

"After we liberate Palestine, what will we do with the Israeli war criminals? I am not a Nelson Mandela fan in this regard. Truth? Yes. Forgiveness? No. No way. Never. Reconciliation? Well, yes, but after liberation and justice, not before."
As'ad Abu Khalil

The Angry Arab on the repugnant Totten:" Michael Totten wants to send pizza to killers"

"Kathy, my 1st ex-wife (not to be confused with Maria, my 2nd ex-wife) sent me this item and she was outraged (she wrote: "Noooooo, that Michael Totten doesn't hate Arabs at all. That asshole lives in Beirut?". Totten wrote: "There's something truly heartwarming about this. Such a small and easy thing to do for people who could really use some encouragement and thanks. I'm an atheist/agnostic ex-Christian who has never been to Israel, but sometimes I feel like those folks over there are my countrymen, not just "merely" our allies. It costs less than US $20 to send a pizza to a patrol. With so much virulent anti-semitism from nearly all quarters, a small gift to Israeli soldiers from someone outside Israel is a nice little antidote to racism and hate.""
PUKE!

The Palestinian red crescent society (PRCS) announced on Tuesday that its medical teams were the targets of 455 Israeli attacks in 2009

The Palestinian red crescent society (PRCS) announced on Tuesday that its medical teams were the targets of 455 Israeli attacks in 2009 including shooting and physical assaults.

A PRCS report said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired 15 times at its ambulance vehicles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip killing one of the volunteers in Gaza and wounding ten others in addition to damaging 22 ambulance vehicles.

It added that the IOF troops obstructed its teams on 440 occasions while carrying casualties and patients to hospitals and clinics.

Egyptian journalist suspended for visiting Israel ( And so should he be)

Journalists union suspends 'October' editor for three months after he says he visited Israel more than 25 times; another editor warned for receiving Israeli ambassador at her house
A five-member panel, citing union rules barring support for normalization of ties with Israel, issued a warning against Mustafa, rather than taking more serious action.
"We limited ourselves to issuing a warning because the commission's job is not to punish or seek vengeance against a colleague but to guarantee decisions are taken in a democratic manner," said panel member Gamal Fahmi.

Career

"If I don't do anything in my life, I want to bring categorical rejection of Israel back in fashion. I hope I have already."
The Angry Arab, As'ad Abu Khalil

"Boycott Israeli Apartheid Products" in a Dutch supermarket

Freeze Flash Mob in supermarket in Holland to promote boycot of Israeli products. 'We will not do business as usual with Israel as long as it commits war crimes and doesnt comply with international law.'

Settlers/soldiers thuggery in Bethlehem

Feb. 2 2010 – Monday started with the news that the Israeli military has decided to reoccupy part of Ush Al-Ghrab in Beit Sahour after having left it in 2006 and Tuesday saw the army begin clearing land of Ush Ghrab. Ush Ghrab is part public (Palestinian) land but a major part of it is private lands that was put off limit to their owners for nearly four decades and used as a center for the occupation forces in Bethlehem district. From this military camp, nearly 300 Palestinian homes were partially or completely destroyed in 2002 and 2003.

Benny Morris' lecture cancelled in Britain

The Cambridge University Israel Society have cancelled a talk by former Cambridge student Benny Morris after pressure from students.
------
BTW, Benny Morris is the Israeli historian who once declared in an interview (in 2004) "Palestinians should be "contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us. Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

I disagree. There IS a choice. If you don't like the locals, you can go back to Europe!..

54 House Members Risk Their Careers to Support Gaza

Fifty-four members of the US House of Representatives have sent a letter to President Obama urging him “to use diplomatic pressure to resolve the blockade affecting Gaza.”

Initially drafted by Democrats Keith Ellison, Minnesota, and Jim McDermott, Washington, the letter says, in part:

"The unabated suffering of Gazan civilians highlights the urgency of reaching a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts. . . . The current blockade has severely impeded the ability of aid agencies to do their work to relieve suffering."

Fifty-two other members of the House joined Ellison and McDermott in signing the letter, a dramatic increase in congressional voices defying the powerful Israel Lobby.
------------------
UPDATE: 53 now as one representative just caved in under pressure from you know who.

Zionism Laid Bare

By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Israeli Exceptionalism" (A must read article..)

"Until recent years, the notion that Zionism was a benign, indeed a humanitarian, political movement designed for the noble purpose of creating a homeland and refuge for the world’s stateless, persecuted Jews was a virtually universal assumption. In the last few years, particularly since the start of the al-Aqsa intifada in 2000, as Israel’s harsh oppression of the Palestinians has become more widely known, a great many Israelis and friends of Israel have begun to distance themselves from and criticize Israel’s occupation policies, but they remain strong Zionists and have been at pains to propound the view that Zionism began well and has only lately been corrupted by the occupation. Alam demonstrates clearly, through voluminous evidence and a carefully argued analysis, that Zionism was never benign, never good—that from the very beginning, it operated according to a “cold logic” and, per Rumi, had “no humanity.” Except perhaps for Jews, which is where Israel’s and Zionism’s exceptionalism comes in.

Alam argues convincingly that Zionism was a coldly cynical movement from its beginnings in the nineteenth century. Not only did the founders of Zionism know that the land on which they set their sights was not an empty land, but they set out specifically to establish an “exclusionary colonialism” that had no room for the Palestinians who lived there or for any non-Jews, and they did this in ways that justified, and induced the West to accept, the displacement of the Palestinian population that stood in their way. With a simple wisdom that still escapes most analysts of Israel and Zionism, Alam writes that a “homeless nationalism,” as Zionism was for more than half a century until the state of Israel was established in 1948, “of necessity is a charter for conquest and—if it is exclusionary—for ethnic cleansing.”

Carlos Santana cancels concert because of anti-Israel pressure'

Guitarist Carlos Santana reportedly received messages that "it's better" that he not perform in Israel, according to what a senior official in the Israeli music production market involved in producing Santana's show told Yedioth Ahronoth on Saturday.

From the horse's mouth : Barak: make peace with Palestinians or face apartheid

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt ­warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish ­majority or an "apartheid" regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.

There have been no formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in more than a year, but Barak was speaking at a rare joint event with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as part of an annual national security conference in the Israeli city of Herzliya. The pair shook hands and both were warmly applauded....

..."As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
The Guardian

High-ranking Israeli officer: we targeted Gazans without weapons

"A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year’s Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers"."
The Independent
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Goldstone was spot on( in case you doubted).

Norman Finkelstein’s new book on Gaza

American writer Norman Finkelstein is soon to release his new book, “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion“, a concise examination of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. (It’s also worth noting that Finkelstein has chosen a relatively new publisher, OR Books, to release his work, a print on demand and online distributor).
Here’s the forward:

"Alongside many others I have devoted much of my adult life to the achievement of a just peace between Israel and Palestine. It cannot be said that Palestinians living under occupation have derived much benefit from these efforts. The changes that have occurred have only been for the worse. Under the guise of what is called the “peace process” Israel has effectively annexed wide swaths of the West Bank and shredded the social fabric of Palestinian life there and in the Gaza Strip.

It would nonetheless be unduly pessimistic to say that no progress has been made. Israel can no longer count on reflexive support for its policies. Public opinion polls over the past decade reveal a growing unease with Israeli conduct not only outside but also inside Jewish communities around the world. This shift largely stems from the fact that the public is now much better informed. Historians have dispelled many of the myths Israel propagated to justify its dispossession and displacement of Palestine’s indigenous population; human rights organizations have exposed Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians living under occupation; and a consensus has crystallized in the legal-diplomatic arena around a settlement of the conflict that upholds the basic rights of Palestinians."

A taste of own's medicine

KEVIN Rudd's (Australian PM) bid for a UN Security Council seat has been dealt a severe blow after a warning from the Arab League that it is less likely to succeed because of Australia's support for Israel.
Hashem Yousseff, chief of cabinet for Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa, told The Australian Canberra kept "bad company" at the UN, where it often opposes anti-Israel resolutions in alliance with the US, Canada and small Pacific island states.

Australia's support for Israel, he said, was "one of the elements that will be taken into consideration" by the 22-member Arab League in deciding whether to support Australia's bid for a seat on the UN Security Council for the 2013-14 term.

An American soldier explains what he did in the Middle East

Back in 2008, a number of former American soldiers gave testimony at the “Winter Soldier” hearings and detailed the horrific crimes committed in our name in America’s imperial pursuits.

Health professionals observe a raise of mutations at birth in Gaza

Ramallah. Health professionals have observed a raise of mutations at birth in Gaza, since the Israeli offensive last year.

One of these, is a story of a child born at the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. The child was born with severe congenital malformations, such as his face, eyes, short stature, flattened nose, reddish-brownish skin discoloration, short limbs with feet and toes severely curled towards the inside in a similar shape to that in gorillas.

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT STOLE OVER 1 BILLION SHEKELS FROM PALESTINIAN LABOURERS ‘INSURANCE PAYMENTS’

State siphoned off Palestinian workers’ insurance money’
BY BEN HARTMAN
The government of Israel has siphoned over a billion shekels in money taken from Palestinian laborers for national insurance between 1970-1994, a report released on Wednesday states.

According to the report, compiled by the workers’ rights organization Kav LaOved, between the years 1970-1994 over NIS 1 billion was withheld from Palestinian workers’ salaries in order to pay their national insurance, but in practice, the report states, the money was instead funneled to the Finance Ministry and used to pay National Labor Union fees, even while the workers were not given membership in the union.

Kav LaOved said that during those years, Palestinian workers would receive an invoice with their paycheck that detailed a sum withdrawn for national insurance. According to the report’s findings, only 7.63 percent of the withheld funds went to pay for the workers’ insurance, with the remainder being funneled to the Finance Ministry.

Sheikh Jarrah: Gawi family tent demolished as tension builds, gathering to rebuild tent today at 4PM

Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem – At 4PM in a showing of solidarity with the forcefully evicted families of Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli, Palestinian and international supporters will gather to rebuild the Gawi family tent after it was demolished by police earlier today.

It’s happened: all the energy in journalism has now moved to the internet

"This week I realized that the internet has won; the famous tipping point has occurred, and people (sorry; that is journalese for "everyone I know") are getting their information off the web, not from print publications. My completely-subjective evidence:

–I bought the Times the other day for two important stories, the State of the Union speech and Steve Jobs’s announcement of his new Ipad. It lies unopened. I already absorbed what I had to absorb about both stories, didn’t get to it."
"At the risk of stating the obvious, people are moving to the web because it’s more exciting, it’s completely immediate, the writers are well-informed, and you see someone’s mind in action rather than through 100 corporate filters, which characterized a lot of my labors in the MSM. People are more sophisticated about information than ever. It’s a new world."
Philip Weiss

Obama puts the pressure on ...the Palestinians!

Mitchell to Abbas: No more excuses, renew Mideast talks
United States special Mideast envoy George Mitchell has urged Europe to step up pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to kick-start stalled peace talks with Israel, the London-based A-Sharq-al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.

"The time has come to stop finding excuses for avoiding a return to the negotiating table," the London paper quoted Mitchell as saying, citing French officials.

Arab politicians 'facing increased persecution’ in Israel

Jonathan Cook
NAZARETH // Leaders of the Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities.....

Arab politicians are particularly concerned about a bill introduced last month requiring all parliamentary candidates to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. If passed, the seats of the 10 Arab MPs belonging to non-Zionist parties in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset, would be under threat.
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"loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state" not just loyalty to Israel or to the state!!

VIDEO: Israel's immigration police cracks down on pro-Palestinian foreigners

Israel's new immigration police has joined security forces in cracking down on foreign activists residing in the Palestinian West Bank, Haaretz has learned.

The Oz Unit participated last week in the attempted arrest of a number of activists in the West Bank town of Bil'in, and also in the raid that nabbed leading Palestinian militants Mohammed Hatib that same night. Two weeks ago, the unit took part in the arrest of a Czech activist in Ramallah.
Haaretz

IKF (K for killing) denies disciplining top officers over white phosphorous use in Gaza war

Update:
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday denied that two of its senior officers had been summoned for disciplinary action after headquarters staff found that the men exceeded their authority in approving the use of phosphorus shells during last year's military campaign in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli government wrote in a recent report.
Haaretz

I have a feeling that this comment (quote by Ayn Rand) posted by Jemmy on Zinn's post, is going to ruin my day. Maybe, after all, I have been, in life, ill prepared to face and withstand such lack of humanity, empathy and simple decency..This, for sure, is not going to make me any less misanthropic, something which I'm more inclined to be day after day. (I told you it's going to ruin my day!)

" ... you can't claim one should respect the 'rights' of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights. But let's suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages--which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched--to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it's great that some of them did. The racist Indians today--those who condemn America--do not respect individual rights." (Ayn Rand)

Netanyahu compares Gaza's rocket attacks to the bombing of london in WW2

"They [the international community] know that no country has faced the kind of terror rocket attacks that we have faced, except for Britain during World War II, and that our response was the only sensible response. Operation Cast Lead was a more proportionate response than was meted out by Great Britain when it was hit by a roughly equal number of projectiles."
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He forgot to mention the stone throwing...Worse than Dresden, I believe!
In a nut shell(!) the guy is nuts!

Canadian students lead the way on BDS

Carleton University is no stranger to BDS activism, and it has a strong precedent to build upon. In 1987, Carleton divested from all companies complicit in the apartheid regime in South Africa. Carleton’s president at the time wrote a memorandum, saying, “Carleton University abhors apartheid and will do all it can to show its position on apartheid within its business practices.” Given Carleton’s past commitment to divesting from apartheid regimes, SAIA is calling on the university to once again place itself on the right side of history by ending its investments in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

What is happening to the war-scarred children of Gaza?

"I’ve been publishing the compelling stories by Australian Donna Mulhearn during her recent trip to Gaza.

Here’s her latest and last reflections:

"Dear friends,

The children concentrated hard as they drew the blood spurting out of bodies, the helicopters firing bullets onto people below, the aeroplanes dropping bombs. They also drew weary palm trees, grey clouds and houses broken in two.

But it was one child’s depiction of the sun that really broke my heart. In this drawing, the scenes of war were graphically depicted in a typical child-like way, and in the top left-hand corner, watching on, was the sun. It was coloured bright yellow, with rays extending towards the earth. It had large blue eyes, with big eyelashes, and little red lips. It looked similar to the way many children around the world would draw the sun.

Except this sun, the sun in Gaza, had tears falling down its cheeks.

The sun was crying. In the mind of this little boy from Gaza, his view of our world is of chaos around him and a sun that is crying."

Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda

Gideon Levy
"Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn't been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort - never have so many ministers deployed across the globe - is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we'll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget.

It won't help much. International Holocaust Remembrance Day has passed, the speeches will soon be forgotten, and the depressing everyday reality will remain. Israel will not come out looking good, even after the PR campaign.

On the eve of his departure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Yad Vashem. "There is evil in the world," he said. "Evil must be stamped out at the beginning." Some people are "trying to deny the truth." Lofty words, said by the same person who only the day before, not quite in the same breath, uttered very different words, words of true evil, evil that should be extinguished at the start, evil that Israel is trying to hide.

Female IDF soldiers break their silence

Excerpt:(YNet)
"Another female Sachlav soldier told the story of the time an eight-year-old settler girl in Hebron decided to bash a stone into the head of a Palestinian adult crossing her passing by her in the street. "Boom! She jumped on him, and gave it to him right here in the head… then she started screaming 'Yuck, yuck, his blood is on me'".


The soldier said the Palestinian then turned in the girl's direction – a move that was interpreted as a threat by one of the soldiers in the area, who added a punch of his own: "And I stood there horrified… an innocent little girl in her Shabbat dress… the Arab covered the wound with his hand and ran." She recalled another incident with the same child: "I remember she had her brother in the stroller, a baby. She was giving him stones and telling him: 'Throw them at the Arab'."

ISRAEL: 'Avatar' and the Palestinian blues

Los Angeles Times
""Avatar" may be rocking the box office, but it's rocking the casbah too, getting people to ask who's who with the blues and who exactly are the meanies in Israel.

This week, a screening of "Avatar" erupted into a small ruckus in a suburb when one moviegoer loudly announced that the Palestinians should learn from this movie what to do to the Jews, causing a commotion and angering others in the audience.

The opinionated moviegoer was Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in Nazereth to a Jewish mother and Arab father, he is an accomplished actor of many years, a filmmaker as well as a political activist who is very outspoken against the occupation.

Mer-Khamis confirmed the incident and added in the newspaper Maariv: "No one dares to make the real analogy. 'Avatar' is one of the bravest films made. It portrays the occupation, but people aren't making the analogy. Many would like to be like the blue people but don't understand the meaning. This is why people got angry at the movie theater. It is no secret that I think the Israelis are occupiers and the Palestinians occupied. Israel sits forcefully on lands that belong to others and this is exactly what the movie is talking about."

Researcher: Israel destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books

Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel's establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says
"Israel plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the years after the State's establishment, according to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher.

In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera's website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian books in the framework of its plan to "Judaize the country" and cut off its Arab residents from their nation and culture.

According to the doctoral dissertation, Israeli authorities collected tens of thousands of Arab books in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Safed, and other towns that were home to Arabs. Israeli officials proceeded to hand out about half the books, while destroying the second half, characterizing them as a "security threat," the researcher said.

In his al-Jazeera interview, the researcher claimed that, based on Israeli archives, IDF troops plundered the books from the homes of Palestinians expelled during the "Nakba" and handed them over to authorities. The State proceeded to establish a library in Jaffa and other towns for the books, he said.

The American mind and the Israel/Palestine conflict: An interesting comment

A comment on this post on Mondoweiss(A window into the rightwing American mind re Israel/Palestine) has attracted the following interesting comment by a certain Avi (An Israeli):

"It’s all part of the conditioning the population undergoes at the hands of its media, government and institutions.

It probably is racism to a degree. If we looked at the stereotypes about African Americans in the US and the stereotypes about Arabs/Muslims we find that those stereotypes are almost identical. Angry, violent, primitive, primal, rude, unclean, lazy are stereotypes used to describe both groups, with perhaps the added “terrorist” label for Arabs/Muslims.

But, it goes beyond that.

Consider movies produced by The Cannon group with their mini Hollywood located just outside of Jerusalem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannon_Group
The Cannon group brought us such garbage as Delta Force (with Chuck Norris) where the bad guys are Palestinian “terrorists” who hijack a plane with a few Holocaust survivors with American passports and Jewish names on board. Of course, the Holocaust survivors get singled out by the hijackers and are forced to relive the horror of yesteryear at the hands of the evil Palestinians.

Those are some of the blatant displays of propaganda, but there are more subtle cues that purport to be funny or humorous. Take for example, Adam Sandler’s Click in which Rob Schneider plays the wealthy yet primal Arab prince who stares at American women’s behinds with sexual perversion, unable to conceal his desires. The old “They’re gonna rape all your women” stereotype.

Then there’s the daily bludgeoning of the propaganda that depicts Israel as “our friends” the “good guys” and Arabs/Muslims as “enemies of civilization” and the “cave dwelling apes”.

Of course, it doesn’t end there, there is also the process of subtle propaganda, where Jews in general are shown as an inseparable part of America. Sex and the City “I’m invited to a bar mitzvah next week, what should I wear?” This way, Jews and by extension Israel are depicted as an inseparable part of the fabric of American culture.
Over time, TV audiences become accustomed to the symbolism that follows, the menorah, Hanukkah. This is all a process by which one group becomes part of the mainstream. At the same time, Arabs/Islam are associated solely with terrorism, violence, unrest. They are distant, unfamiliar, have strange accents and they hate America. You won’t see John Travolta’s character asking his co-worker if he’d like to join him to a Ramadan dinner, for example.

Another aspect has to do with the glorification of Israel in the US, in mainstream culture. Israelis are constantly touted as “experts on security and terrorism”. Israeli weapons are used by the good guys in a given network TV drama. The Desert Eagle, El-Al security, Israeli grav maga’, gadgetry etc.. are all shown in a favorable light and marketed to right wing, militant Americans as true and tried, durable field gear and tactics.

Over time, such products become household names like GE, RCA, Nike, Windex and in turn reaffirm Israel’s closeness and familiarity in the eyes of the average American, while Muslims and Arabs are still associated with camels, caves and bombs. They are exotic, live in far away lands, mostly in deserts and they can barely speak English.

On top of it all, both countries share the same Orwellian mind ****. The Pentagon is part of the department of DEFENSE. Israel’s military is the Israel DEFENSE forces.
What do Arabs have? They have Hamas, Hezbollah the party of Allah, liberation this and freedom that, all dismissed as “terrorists”."

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It's like looking inside fleming's brain!

Obama "answers" an unexpected question...

Nauseating!

Price tag : Colonist thugs attack Palestinians to avenge West Bank outpost demolition

"The crowd of rioters reached a house at the edge of Bitilu, which overlooks the nearby settlements. The house belongs to the Mazar family. Some of the teens approached the back of the house and threw stones at the windows. Other approached the car at the front and tried to set it on fire. One of the seats did catch fire, but the residents managed to put it out.

Two other members of the household tried to escape in another car. The rioters surrounded them and pelted them with stones.

Mohammed Mazar, who was visiting his grandmother, was hit in the head and began to bleed. Another relative was also injured, and both were evacuated to a local clinic."

Livni, Barak 'wanted for war crimes' in Poland

Knesset members visiting Krakow surprised to see ads against opposition chairwoman, defense minister on number of bulletin boards across city
"Israeli leaders are still wanted in Europe, but not in a positive way: Knesset members visiting Poland for ceremonies marking International Holocaust Day were surprised to see ads against Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni in the city of Krakow on Tuesday evening.
Posters hung not far from the Israeli lawmakers' hotel read in English, "Wanted for war crimes," offering the public an award of 10,000 euro in exchange for information on Barak or Livni's expected arrival in Europe. The ads included a website address for people interested in providing information on the Israeli officials."
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And here:
Hamas admits masterminding arrest warrants of Israelis abroad

"British newspaper speaks with Diya al-Din Madhoun, who heads the Hamas committee set up to coordinate the campaign to issue arrest warrants against Israeli public figures in European courts. 'All the political and military leaders of the occupation in our sights'"

How Israel uses the Holocaust as a political weapon

Cuba, Israel, and Haiti: Bill Clinton lies (surprise!)

"If Ha'aretz is to be believed, this was Bill Clinton speaking to Shimon Peres in Davos: "Shimon, I don't know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital at Haiti. The Israeli hospital was the only operational facility which was able to perform surgery and advanced tests." Well, I don't know what "advanced tests" we're talking about (and, frankly, I'm skeptical that "advanced tests" were among the more pressing needs of the Haitian people), but there were Cuban doctors performing surgery in hospitals in Haiti long before the Israelis (or anyone else) arrived after the earthquake, as even NPR finally acknowledged."
(thanks Mara)

How news is made

Howard Zinn, once invited to talk about The Holocaust choses to talk about other holocausts

"Some Jews have used the Holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation. Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestianian land, and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered, as David Ben-Gurion had predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza). And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to build political support among the numerically small but influential Jewish voters—note the solemn pronouncements of Presidents wearing yarmulkas to underline their anguished sympathy.

I would never have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time. If the Holocaust was to have any meaning, I thought, we must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time. We must atone for our allowing the Jewish Holocaust to happen by refusing to allow similar atrocities to take place now—yes, to use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die."
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Howard Zinn passed away this week. To my chagrin I had never read him until today. Never too late!

The "Invading Arab Armies" Israeli Zionist myth debunked!

Rasheed Khalidi in "The Iron Cage"
"To revisit one of the most important of these myths about the infant state of Israel, the number of Arab armies that invaded Israel after it's establishment is described in a range of standard accounts as ranging from five to seven. However, there were only seven independent Arab states in 1948 (some hardly independent, and some hardly sates in any meaningful sense of the word), two of which,Saudi Arabia and Yemen, did not even have regular armies and no means of getting any armed forces they might have had to Palestine.Beyond his, of the five Arab regular Arab regular armies, one(That of Lebanon) never crossed the international frontier with Palestine,two(those of Iraq and Transjordan) scrupulously refrained from crossing the frontiers of the Jewish state laid down in the United Nation plan as per secret Jordanian understandings with both Britain and the Zionist leadership and thus never "invaded" Israel, and one ( that of Syria) made only minor inroads across the new Israeli state's frontiers.The only serious and long lasting incursion into the territory of the Jewish state as laid under the partition plan was that of the Egyptian army. Meanwhile the fiercest fighting during 48 war took place with the Jordanian army during multiple Israeli OFFENSIVES into area assigned by the UN to the Arab state. This story of an invasion by multiple, massive Arab armies, and other legends, is not just an important element of the Israeli myth of origin: it's a nearly universal myth."
(Thanks VAA)

Goldstone found that Israel’s collective punishment policy in Lebanon served as a model for Gaza

(The aftermath of Israel’s ‘Dahiya doctrine’ in Beirut, 2006.)

by Adam Horowitz
As Israel prepares its response to the Goldstone Report, several articles indicate that its primary objective is to discredit the contention that it carried out, in the words of Ethan Bronner, "an official plan to terrorize the Palestinian population." Today Haaretz reports that Israel’s response to the UN will seek to "reject most of the fundamental claims of the Goldstone report: it intentionally waged a punitive campaign against a civilian population, including the destruction of infrastructure."

This promises to be one of the most contentious debates over the report in the coming months, and as part of our effort to post portions of the Goldstone Report there are several relevant portions we want to share. The excerpt below outlines Israel’s possible strategy and intention for the Gaza attack based on prior history and statements from Israeli military and political leaders. Because Israel refused to participate with the inquiry there was no way to interview them directly about this.
(Mondoweiss)

New York Times' Ethan Bronner's son joins the IDF

New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief's conflict of interest
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2010

"Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper's reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the "Israel Defense Forces."

On 23 January, Bronner published a lengthy article on Israel's efforts to refute allegations contained in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its attack on Gaza last winter ("Israel Poised to Challenge a UN Report on Gaza").

As'ad AbuKhalil, a frequent critic of Bronner's coverage, blogged in response that "The New York Times devoted more space to Israeli and Zionist criticisms of the Goldstone report than to the [content of the] report itself" (The Angry Arab News Service, "Ethan Bronner's propaganda services, 25 January 2010)

Bronner's pro-Israeli bias reporting on Israel's attack on Gaza last year was also criticized by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (See "NYT and the Perils of Mideast 'Balance'," 4 February 2009)."

This article in Haaretz about one (small) group of colonist settlers, feeling somehow "bad" about the Palestinian condition in the occupied West Bank, are trying to reach out to the villagers which is kind of nice. But as I was reading on I felt a chill running down my spine:

Cohen explains: "There is an awakening to the fact that there is another people here, that there is a story that has been suppressed.

Good, but it looks like there's a problem:

Amrussi says:"There is an expression [appearing in Deuteronomy 7:2] 'Thou shalt not show mercy unto them,' which forbids us from giving other peoples a reason to stay. This expression was adopted by the settlers. They didn't buy from Arabs in order not to give them a reason to stay.

And peace?

'Emily says:I will embrace the Palestinian because I want the Zionist enterprise to survive. I come from a religious place. I say that peace is a despicable, chewed-up and forced word, so it should be put to the side, and we should go to a meeting instead.

Otherwise "nice" people those settlers indeed! It's just too bad their religion seems to be getting in the way! Now I've heard a lot about calls for reform of Islam. Are there any calls to reform Jewish scriptures? That would be nice too.

An interesting comment in regards to Haiti rescue teams

"Israel was the only country that I know of that crowed about how helpful it was…in the global media. (It had no choice but to help, actually.) I can understand crowing at home, but lifting your shirt to show your muscled chest to the world, and pulling down your pants to prove the size of your dick and whooping as proof of how well-endowed you are to lend a helping hand is, frankly, low-rent. But that’s what we’ve come to expect of Israel.

Qatar beat the Israelis there by a day with a c-17 (bigger than the two planes Israel sent combined) with more disaster relief (50 tonnes) and a field hospital and medical teams than Israel sent. Canada sent 80 helicopters in huge non-stop military cargo planes before we got there, and rescue teams, docs, and money. 127 countries contributed to this effort, and Israel crows it saved a Haitian! Official! Look how the world loves us! Look how wonderful we are! How kind!

Every country reports its participation. That’s not unusual. What is tiring and pervasive about Israel is that it wants the whole world to know what it's done. Like some seedy 13-year-old that scored his first babe.
(Mondoweiss comments section)

Guantanamo guard reunited with ex-inmates

"He would say, 'you ever listen to Eminem or Dr Dre' and he threw off a little rap and it was just funny. I thought how could it be somebody is here who's doing the same stuff that I do when I'm back home."

Click on title to see video.

We can kill Palestinians with impunity, says Israeli

"The depth of depravity in certain sections of the Israeli elite is stripped bare with this shocking piece published in Yediot. It doesn’t really need an introduction, except to say that such rhetoric will simply continue to isolate Israel even further. And they deserve it:"
Antony Loewenstein

BDS can never be won by usual Zionist tactics

The issues of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel were discussed regularly this week in Cairo. This movement is feared by Israel and its friends because the Jewish state can no longer hide behind its military might. In the war of ideas, the never-ending occupation is Israel’s weak point.

Public resistance to Israel’s expansion into East Jerusalem is growing.

Jerusalem-based David Shulman writes:

I think something new is happening in Jerusalem. I see it in the young people who bear the brunt of this demonstration, who organize it and lead it and cheerfully face the Border Police and the blue police and, much worse, the clandestine Shabak operators week after week. Once again, many of my students are here. They, I am sure, are our future, and I trust them to see it through. They are clearly feeling the bizarre happiness that so often floods you at such moments—the happiness that naturally flows from saying “no” to self-evident evil. Hence the drummers and the clowns and, specially for today, the Santa Clauses in brilliant red and even one masquerading demonstrator dressed in an Israeli Army uniform painted totally white, his face and hair also white—the soldiers and the police seem particularly troubled and angered by him and, not unexpectedly, try to arrest him, but I think he manages to get away.

Dennis Brutus Dies: Activist whose efforts helped bring about the end of apartheid

The story of the ending of white racial supremacy in South Africa has for its cast men and women in political, church, cultural and other such groups whose members mostly ended in prison or exile in the 40-year struggle. Was there another case, like that of Dennis Brutus, of an individual who built up on his own personal initiative and toil a process which brought the evils of apartheid to a world-wide constituency and bit by bit won its war against the perpetrators of apartheid and their complacent, blinkered allies in many countries? Was there a man who actually forced the South African government to yield, at a high price to himself and at the cost of much suffering?
Thanks Mara

Juan Cole: Top Ten Good News Stories from the Muslim World in 2009 that You Never Heard About

10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University.
9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years.
8. A Pew Forum on Religion and Life poll finds that American Muslims are unusual in the degree to which they are integrated into mainstream American society and demonstrate moderate attitudes, condemning religious extremism and violence.
7. The information revolution is making strides in the Arab world.
6. Albania has averaged 10 percent a year growth for each of the last four years
5. The small Gulf oil monarchy of Kuwait took steps toward greater democracy and rule of law.
The rest is here

Gaza sees rise in malformations with newborns as a result of Israel's use of prohibited weapons

Since the Israeli Operation Cast Lead last winter, the besieged Gaza Strip saw an increase in the proportion of fetus and newborns malformations.

Who Profits from the Occupation?

Exposing the Israeli occupation industry
The Privatization of the Checkpoints and the Late Occupation

Don't Mess with Yemen

Patrick Cockburn
"It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in Afghanistan and Iraq."
"Yemen has always been a dangerous place. Wonderfully beautiful, the mountainous north of the country is guerrilla paradise. The Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable, though this has its limits. For instance, the Kazam tribe east of Aden are generous to passing strangers, but deem the laws of hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal territory, at which time he becomes "a good back to shoot at".

Iraqi prisoners ‘were sexually humiliated by female British soldier’

Fourteen new cases of sexual abuse have been made against a secretive British Army interrogation unit
Five former detainees have made specific allegations against a female interrogator they knew as “Katy”.

The claims are among 14 new cases brought against a secretive British Army interrogation unit. These bring to 40 the total of pending British court cases by former Iraqi detainees.
TimesOnline

Iraqis shocked as judge drops Blackwater charges

Iraq has criticised a US judge's decision to dismiss charges against private security guards accused of killing Iraqi civilians.

The five guards from the company Blackwater Security had been charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians during an attack at a busy Baghdad roundabout in 2007.
ABC

Danish police shoot intruder at cartoonist's home

Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.
BBC

Gaza Freedom Marchers issue the ‘Cairo Declaration’ to end this chapter and chart the way forward

The Gaza Freedom March has come to an end, but before the protesters dispersed they agreed on the following statement:"

Bilin commemorates

"When the march reached the gate of the Apartheid Wall the Israeli military stationed on the other side of the wall immediately responded by throwing tear-gas at the demonstrators and shooting sound grenades. Despite the violence from the army, the demonstrators managed to open the gate in the wall in an attempt to reach their land, stolen by Israel for the construction of the Wall and settlement blocks behind it. Dozens suffered tear-gas inhalation."

the reluctant radical

Philip Weiss in Cairo(Free Gaza March):
"Mick ran the meeting like “a dictator,” as he himself acknowledged, to get it over inside an hour. If we went any longer, people would start arguing, and he didn’t want argument, he wanted a plan of action. “If anyone wants another chair, I’ll stand down.” But we were with him. Mick’s leadership was evidence of a shift inside the top of the Gaza Freedom March. When we got to Cairo we had been led chiefly by the American antiwar group Code Pink. But after that group’s decision to accept the Egyptian government’s offer of two buses of 100 people to visit Gaza, instead of all 1400 marchers, Code Pink had been attacked and even conceded error; and the result was that Europeans who were harder-line than we Americans took over some of the organizing function. I don’t think anyone would say that this was not a good thing. In fact, Medea Benjamin, a leader of Code Pink, was jammed in the stairwell just below me, showing the grace and toughness and indefatigability she has shown throughout months of organizing. But at this point a more stubborn spirit was in the air, and we were all going along with it."
Mondoweiss

2009 in Perspective: Glenn Greenwald on the Five Wars US Is Fighting in Muslim Countries

Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald discusses US foreign policy, including the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, drone strikes on Pakistan, cruise missile attacks on Yemen, operations in Somalia, the ongoing operation in Iraq, and much more.

Associated Press flawed 'Factbox' about Golan

How AP manipulates facts in order to fit them with a certain narrative more in line with Israeli hasbara. Sample:
AP: Israel-Syria peace talks broke down in 2000. Israel offered to withdraw from all of the Golan Heights down to the international border in exchange for full peace. Syria insisted on recovering land across the border.

HC(Helena Cobban) - That is quite simply not true. The reason the peace bid that Israeli PM belatedly made in 2000 got absolutely nowhere was precisely because he pulled back on assurances PM Yitzhak Rabin had earlier given that Israel would withdraw to the international border. Barak was not prepared to do that, but Pres. Hafez al-Asad insisted as always that that was the only basis on which he would conclude a peace deal.

Asad did not ask for-- far less insist on-- a single inch of land that was not Syria's under international law.
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An entry I found on Richard Parker's( A regular commenter on Mondoweiss)blog 'Notes From the Levant', now in the blog roll.