From 1967 to 2006, Israel uprooted an estimated 2.5 million trees in the occupied territories

From 1967 to 1999, Israel uprooted an estimated 1,000,000 trees in the OT, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006 (source: Status of the Environment, Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ), 2007)

On the uprooting of trees following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Meron Benvenisti wrote:

"The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunams of fruit-bearing trees does not fit Israel’s self-image as a society that knows how to “make the desert bloom.” And the contention that the green Arab landscape had been destroyed because of the necessity of adapting the crops to the agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion that it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance of the specific human community that had shaped the landscape in accordance with its needs and preferences. (”Sacred Landscape,” Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; p. 165)
And:
Report: 14000 Palestinian olive trees subjected to Israeli aggression in 2009
A Palestinian research centre, specialised in monitoring Israeli violations, revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities destroyed 14000 olive trees in the Palestinian territories during 2009. Such assaults included the uprooting of thousands of olive trees, for the sake of expanding the Israeli settlements, and the burning and cutting of thousands more by settlers.

Blacklisted

(Contributed by Maracatu)
The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued its annual black list of countries that do not respect human rights. For the first time since 2006, a new country appears on the list, Honduras. The inclusion of Honduras is based on the report of the IACHR visit to the country last August. Chapter 4 of the report, which can be downloaded here, is an executive summary of the longer IACHR report on Human Rights and the Coup, issued in December, 2009. Compare that report with the rather sparse State Department report on Human Rights in Honduras.

Global Peace and Justice Groups Threaten Israel's Legitimacy

(Human rights activists protest in Tanzania, January 2, 2009.)
By Stephen Lendman

Working pro bono for Israeli government agencies, the Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides "real-time strategic decision-making" support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy.
Saying global peace and justice groups threaten Israel's legitimacy, its recent series of articles, policy papers, and presentations counterattacked - a combination of damage control and rethink despite legitimate criticism showing Israel delegitimizes itself, and no amount of policy paper makeover will change it. Only Israel can do that, but in its 62 year existence never tried.
In a January 28 brief, RI said Israel:

"face(s) a dramatic assault on the very legitimacy of its existence as a Jewish and democratic state. While the ideological framework for this delegitimacy was solidified after the first Durban" World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, "the trend (got) a boost by the perceived lack of (political) progress, coupled with Operation Cast Lead in Gaza," followed by the damning Goldstone Report.
Groups "making the fundamental delegitimacy" claim want to internationally isolate Israel and ultimately turn it into a pariah state by:

-- demonizing it in public protests, the media, on campuses, and through events like the annual Israel Apartheid Week and World Social Forum, asking its affiliates to excommunicate Israel;
-- promoting the Global BDS Movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) in areas of the economy, academia, culture, sport, and security; at risk is it achieving equivalency between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, yet legitimate critics, including Jimmy Carter, accuse Israel of being worse than apartheid; and
-- targeting the state and its officials legally, including through the International Criminal Court (ICJ) and universal jurisdiction (UJ) to charge Israeli generals and politicians with war crimes.

Can’t Have a Decent Apocalypse Without a Full Cast

Satire by Andy Borowitz

MINNEAPOLIS—Making a joint appearance at a tea party rally in Minneapolis, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota put out a cryptic call for “two more horsemen” to join their movement.

“Michele and me, that’s two horsemen right there,” Palin told the exuberant crowd. “You add two more horsemen into the mix, and we’ll be good to go.” While the two politicians were cagey about what the duties of the aforementioned horsemen would be, Bachmann said, “You can bet it will be a mission to end all missions.”

According to a source close to the two, they have already drawn up a list of possible candidates for the additional two horsemen, a list which includes Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and the entire Cheney family. “It’s a long list,” the source said. “If you add up everyone on the list, the number you get is 666.”

The tea party rally featuring Palin and Bachmann received wide coverage, including in the collected works of Nostradamus and the prophecies of ancient Mayans.

Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

ACTIONS contre Ben Gourion (Action against Ben-Gurion)

ACTIONS contre l'inauguration de l'esplanade Ben Gourion
par le maire de Paris, Delanoë et le président israélien Shimon Peres.
Paris, 15 avril 2010
Réalisation: l'équipe "Palestine Vivra". Durée: 3'45" min.
(Action against the inauguration of the Ben-Gurion promenade by the mayor of Paris, Francois Delanoe and the Israeli president Peres. Produced by the team "Palestine will live")
Comment from Jews Sans Frontieres:
The Mayor of Paris, in the presence of nuclear proliferator extraoridnaire Shimon Peres, inaugurated a naming of a Parisian promenade after Ben Gurion.

Some Parisians didn't like having to stroll the banks of the Seine on the new "ethnic cleansing" promenade.
The Ben Gurion promenade is not just an affront to Palestinians and a show of support for Israel a year after the Gaza slaughter. It is also a white French affirmation of France's own colonial history. It is primarily an establishment "up yours" to the immigrants from Algeria and Africa, Rwanda, the French Caribbeans and Haiti. It is a statement of white pride. That is how it ought to be understood universally. Many French Jews are proud of this promenade and think it is a great victory of theirs. It could be their victory, but only in the wake of a colossal betrayal. The new Ben Gurion Esplanade is a white messianic text that dares not speak its name. It is yet confined to riddles; but it is slouching fast to Paris to be born. In the video you can hear the mayor say that he "fully assumes, nay claims, the legitimacy of Ben Gurion's struggle". One shouldn't doubt that he is ready to claim that struggle, namely, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and its transformation into a European colonial settler state, as all of France's political class is. "Ben Gurion" is the figure of speech, Palestine is its literal referent, Jacques Massu is its allegorical meaning and the Marechal Pétain is its timeless eschaton.

From now on, never visit Paris without a stroll on the Esplanade Marechal Pétain.

Mustafa Barghouthi to OECD’s members: don’t approve Israel’s membership!

"We urge the OECD’s 30 member states not to guarantee Israel’s admission in the organisation", said Dr Barghouthi condemning the new military order issued by Israeli authorities against Palestinians.
Welcoming Israel as a member in the OECD, represents not only granting it practical economic benefits but also demonstrating that the international community is accepting its questionable and reprehensible behavior, which violates the principles of the OECD.

As part of its application membership, Israel submitted information to the OECD providing data which include statistical figures related to occupied areas such Golan Height, East Jerusalem and all the illegal settlements in the West Bank: That means declaring that its economical territory includes all these illegally annexed and occupied areas, contravening OECD principles and policy. We demand that the OECD’s members not to approve Israel’s membership, which will undermine the credibility of the EU and the international community, encouraging Israel’s impunity.

Lebanon commemorates 1996 Qana massacre by Israel

A former Israeli Knesset member has said he would lead an international push to try the Zionist regime and the White House as war criminals.
Azmi Bishara, accused by Tel-Aviv's leaders of spying for Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon War made the statement while touring south Lebanon.
He said Tel-Aviv and the United States would be condemned for the damage they caused to Lebanon during last year's war.
On his tour, he visited Kfar Qana where an Israeli air strike killed 29 civilians in the community center during the war.
Bishara called the attack on Kfar Qana the worst civilian slaughter since Deir Yassin in 1948, adding that these incidents made the "long-awaited agreement with the Zionist entity an impossibility."
In a speech Friday, Bishara praised Hezbollah saying it is now stronger than ever.
Bishara also condemned Israeli attacks against innocent Lebanese civilians during the fighting last year.
"The massacres that were carried out by Israel were not a coincidence but were a strategic policy to frighten people," he said.
He praised Hezbollah for its performance during the 33-day war last summer.
Bishara would be arrested immediately if he returns to occupied Palestine on charges of conducting espionage for Hezbollah.
Both he and Hezbollah have denied the accusations. He has said he is a victim of political persecution.
A Christian from the Israeli town of Nazareth who joined the Knesset [parliament] in 1996, he has frequently spoken out in favor of Palestinian rights.

Settlers attack a village, vandalise a mosque and uproot 300 olive trees

Mosque vandalized as settlers attack Palestinian village
More than 300 olive trees were uprooted and two cars set alight in the West Bank village of Hawara in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Stars of David and the word 'Mohammed,' as well as racist slogans, were also sprayed in Hebrew across the town, including on the walls of a mosque.

A military official told Army Radio that the army suspected settler violence against Palestinians, part of some settlers' policy of imposing a 'price tag' on a government order to freeze Israeli construction in the West Bank.
---------------
Those are settlers from the Yitzhar settlement, famous for it's fascistic rrabis and inhabitants..

Allons Enfants!

I don't have a context for this photo but my guess is that it was hung by protestors of the Peres visit to Paris this week. A street in Paris was renamed after the ethnic cleanser Ben-Gurion.

Pupils in east Jerusalem get half funding of those in west

According to opinion written by city's legal advisor, elementary schools in west Jerusalem receive NIS 408 per child, while pupil in east receives just NIS 214. 'These gaps raise fear of discrimination,' he writes. Jerusalem Municipality in response: Advisor using his opinion to promote his political views
------------
It doesn't matter that the advisor is stating facts and stats, just slam him for his political views. The Israeli way of countering their critics..

PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ (11000 ) DAY

By Mazin Qumsiyeh,
Friday, we had demonstrations in a number of locations in Palestine mostly in honor of prisoners (11,000 kidnapped Palestinians held in Israeli jails). The demonstration in Al-Ma’asara went smoothly even though the night before the Israeli army came in at 1 AM to raid and scare the family of Mohammed and Hassan (their brother is in an Israeli jail). The demonstration was joined by scouts from Sur Baher and other areas in Jerusalem (a sign of Palestinian unity). It was a chance to honor families of prisoners and remember all the political prisoners. It was a chance to remember martyrs like our friend Bassem Abu Rahma who was murdered one year ago in a nonviolent demonstration in Bi’lin. On this anniversary this amazing video is produced in four languages:

A Muckraking Blogger Focuses on Jews

Blogging on the site FailedMessiah.com, Mr. Rosenberg, 51, has transmuted a combination of muckraking reporting and personal grudge into a must-read digest of the actual and alleged misdeeds of the ultra-Orthodox world. He has broken news about sexual misconduct, smear campaigns and dubious business practices conducted by or on behalf of stringently religious Jews.
The New York Times

Mezan Center: “Israel Deliberately Killed Reuters Cameraman”

"On the third anniversary of his death, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights reported that the Israeli army deliberately shot and killed Palestinian cameraman, working for Reuters, Fadel Shana’a, 23, in the Gaza Strip.
Center called on the International Community, regional and international Press Agency and agencies that defend the freedom of press to practice more pressures on their governments to seek the prosecution of Israeli official involved in such crimes.
The Center added that three years after the killing of Shana’a and despite the clear evidence of his murder by the army, “justice seems to be far away from being achieved.
Shana’a and his crew were first targeted by a missile and less than five minutes later, the army fired more missile at their clearly marked press vehicle.
The Al Mezan Center conducted an investigation into the issue and found out that the press vehicle was clearly marked, the team was filming in an open area in broad daylight and their cameras and equipment were clearly seen.

Commemorating One Holocaust While Effecting Another

Khaled Amayreh
"This is the holocaust-carnival season in Israel, or more correctly, the premier annual hasbara event of using the tragic events of World War II to attract sympathy, blackmail the world, and especially divert attention from Israel’s ongoing holocaust against the Palestinian people.

This year, like in every year, more crocodile tears are shed, more hypocrisy is displayed, and more lies are fabricated.

It is a time for the outpouring of lies, including obscene lies, wild-exaggerations, and a surplus of sanctimony and self-righteousness as well as the usual hysterical cries of “Never-again.”

This year, we have been affronted with wide-mouthed Zionist leaders from New York to Tel Aviv, who lie as often as they breathe oxygen, insulting humanity with the same despicable rituals.

And the tacit but clear message remains unchanged, namely that the world has no right to criticize Israel or even prevent her from doing to the Palestinians what Adolph Hitler reportedly did or tried to do to the Jews.

Of course, Jews, like anyone else, have a legitimate right to commemorate the Jewish victims of the Second World War, but they have absolutely no right to manipulate the memory of Hitler’s victims in order to torment and commit a virtual holocaust against another people, the Palestinians.

In fact, doing so, using the memory of Jews who perished at the hands of the Third Reich to justify the attempted destruction by Israel of the Palestinian people, is the worst possible act of identification with and commemoration of these victims.

Yet, this is exactly what Israel is doing, which really makes many people around the world ask questions about the morality of using the holocaust as an industry or even a virtual religion to justify decidedly criminal policies against a people that has been and continues to be on the receiving end of Zionism’s Nazi-like savagery ever since the creation of the evil entity.

This year, the focus has been shifted to Iran as one Zionist leader after the other kept claiming that Iran was about to exterminate Jews worldwide.

The pornographic mendacity would give the impression that Israel which possesses 200-300 nuclear warheads, and is in tight control of US politics and policies, is facing an imminent, mortal, and existential threat of annihilation when in fact a threat of this nature is a million times more unlikely than the occurrence of a collision of a huge meteor coming from outer-space with our planet, say in the next 24 hours."

AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE

A newly released Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video has made international headlines showing a July 2007 shooting incident outside of Baghdad in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. Two soldiers from Bravo Company 2-16, the company depicted in the video, have written an open letter of apology to the Iraqis who were injured or lost loved ones during the attack that, these former soldiers say, is a regular occurrence in this war.

"AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military

Peace be with you.

To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:

We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.

We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.

There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused."

UC Berkeley Speaks Out Against Divestment Bill Veto

Almost one month after the UC Berkeley Student Senate voted 16-4 to divest from General Electric and United technologies because of their complicity in Israeli war crimes the Student Senate meets again to attempt to override a veto by President Will Smelko. The Meeting ended around 7:15 AM with the senate tabling the bill to be voted on next week.

Hedy Epstein Speaks at UC Berkeley 4-14-10

SHITHEAD OF THE YEAR AWARD

"Pardon my English in the above title, but there are no other words suitable to describe the recipient of this ‘award’…..

It goes to (another) Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Elie Wiesel….
You might ask why….

When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind”, noting that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel had delivered a powerful message “of peace, atonement and human dignity” to humanity. (From)

From the same source…. Wiesel is highly criticized by Norman Finkelstein in his book The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein accuses Wiesel of promoting the “uniqueness doctrine” which holds, according to Finkelstein, the Holocaust as the paramount of evil and therefore historically incomparable to other genocides. In the book Wiesel is also lambasted for playing down the importance of other genocides, especially the Turkish Holocaust on the Armenians, and thwarting efforts of raising awareness of the genocide of the Romani people executed by the Nazis. These claims are exemplified by Wiesel’s lobbying for commemorating Jews alone (not the Romani people) in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in addition to numerous Wiesel quotes on the “uniqueness of Holocaust”."

VIDEO SHOCKER: AIPAC Official Mistakenly Admits How It Operates

Top AIPAC official, Jonathan Kessler, is talking about how they will deal with student opponents at UC Berkeley. He then admits how AIPAC operates in Washington.