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."
---------------
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”."

----------------------------
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."
-----------------------------------------
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."
-----------------
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.
--------------
An entry I found on Richard Parker's( A regular commenter on Mondoweiss)blog 'Notes From the Levant', now in the blog roll.