Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank

Jan 30, 2009

The World Economic Forum at Davos had an incredible moment of truth… After Shimon Peres was allowed to justify the wanton killing that the Jewish State engaged in over the territory they have strangled with their inhumane blockade, (and received applause for it by the men and women waiting for their champaign glasses to be filled after the dinner that of course was more important to them than hearing the words of the Prime Minister of the largest European State with a Muslim majority and one of the most strategic areas on the face of the earth), Tayyip Erdogan begins to respond to the barrage of filth poured out by Peres.
 

At the moment, our Turkish translators in www.tlaxcala.es are getting a verbatim translation of the intervention, which we will post up here as soon as it is available, but in the meantime,

Here is a translation found here: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/turkish-prime-minister-erdogan-leaves-the-debate-in-davos-translation/3833761515/?icid=VIDURVNWS06

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Well, we at PTT think several things must be said:
1) More leaders should have the courage to speak out about the atrocities and to isolate Israel from sitting on a stage and endorsing their violence, which has no justification. That Erdogan did this, (and used also as his source writing by one of our editors, Gilad Atzmon), can only encourage us in our belief that sooner or later even people responsible for the guiding of a country numbering almost 63 million people, will stand up to Israel and say enough is enough. We are waiting for other Leaders to follow, the ice has been broken.

2) To state the obvious is no longer verboten. Things have to be called with their names, a State that is a menace to humanity and violent beyond all decency MUST be denounced in the loudest terms possible. We can't walk on eggshells anymore. For a leader to express the thoughts of his people (finally) rather than to kowtow to some impossible situation of sitting on the fence (and Turkey in many ways is a nation that has a lot to answer for in past and recent atrocities, as well as its position of support for the invasion of Iraq) moves a step in the right direction. It is NOT in the interests of Turkey to acquiesce all horrors and violence just to stay in the club. It is sometimes BEST to walk off when you realise the platform is there to present a justification for what cannot be justified. We believe that this brave action, widely appreciated by millions, is the first of a series. Of the entire Davos Forum, this was the moment cited in the news.. It is food for thought.

3) NO normalisation with Israel until they accept the rules of International Law. Thank you PM Erdogan, for listening to us, for using our words, and for using that international platform for expressing the views that we know millions of humanitarian people hold. You are enabling all of us.
Palestine Think Tank

Erdogan gets hero's welcome upon his return to Turkey

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50T20E20090130?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

(excerpt)

By Paul de Bendern

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan received a hero's welcome on his return to Istanbul on Friday after accusing Israel of "knowing very well how to kill" during a heated debate at the World Economic Forum.

Erdogan stormed out of a debate on Israel's Gaza offensive on Thursday, and vowed he might never return to the annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos.

President Shimon Peres had launched a fiery defense of his country's offensive in Gaza over the past month, and with a raised voice and pointed finger, questioned what Erdogan would do if rockets were fired at Istanbul every night.

"When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill," Erdogan, visibly angry, responded as he sat next to Peres at the debate, which also included United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but secular country that historically has had good ties with Israel and the Arab world, played a role in helping broker an end to the Gaza offensive this month, particularly by lobbying the Islamist Hamas group to declare a ceasefire.

Thousands of people gathered at Istanbul's Ataturk airport to greet Erdogan when he returned, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanting "Turkey is proud of you."

"Our people would have expected the same reaction from any Turkish prime minister," he told a news conference at Ataturk airport on Friday morning after speaking to the crowd.

"This was a matter of the esteem and prestige of my country. Hence, my reaction had to be clear. I could not have allowed anyone to poison the prestige and in particular the honor of my country," he said.

"Our reproaches are not against the Israeli people or Jews. Our reproach is totally against the Israeli administration," Erdogan said.

Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine

Destruction in Izbet Abed Rabu. Jan 30, 2009 One family's story There are many stories. Each account -- each murdered individual, each wounded person, each burned-out and broken house, each shattered window, trashed kitchen, strewn item of clothing, bedroom turned upside down, bullet and shelling hole in walls, offensive Israeli army graffiti -- is important. I start to tell the stories of Ezbet Abbed Rabu, eastern Jabaliya, where homes off the main north south road, Salah al-Din, were penetrated by bullets, bombs and/or soldiers. If they weren't destroyed, they were occupied or shot up. Or occupied and then destroyed. The army was creative in their destruction, in their defacing of property, in their insults. Creative in the ways they could shit in rooms and save their shit for cupboards and unexpected places. Actually, their creativity wasn't so broad. The rest was routine: ransack the house from top to bottom. Turn over or break every clothing cupboard, kitchen shelf, television, computer, window pane and water tank. The first house I visited was that of my dear friends, who we'd stayed with in the evenings before the land invasion began, with whom we had huddled in their basement as the random crashes of missiles pulverized around the neighborhood. I worried non-stop about the father. After seeing he was still alive, I'd done the tour, from the bottom up. The safe-haven ground floor room was the least affected: disheveled, piles of earth at bases of windows where it had rushed in with a later bombing which caved the hillside behind, mattresses turned over and items strewn. This room was the cleanest, least damaged. Upstairs to the first level apartment, complete disarray. Feces on the floor. Broken everything. Opened cans of Israeli army provisions. Bullet holes in walls. Stench.                                                 More..........................

Video: Israel faces calls for Gaza war crimes probe

AlJazeera.net

Donald Macintyre in Jabalya, Gaza

Majdi Abed Raboh's house is in ruins following Israeli attacks Jan 30, 2009 As battle raged in Gaza, Israeli soldiers forced Majdi Abed Rabbo to risk his life as a go-between in the hunt for three Hamas fighters. This is his story... After yet another fierce, 45-minute gun battle, Majdi Abed Rabbo was ordered once again to negotiate his perilous way across the already badly-damaged roof of his house, through the jagged gap in the wall and slowly down the stairs towards the first-floor apartment in the rubble-strewn house next door. Not knowing if the men were dead or alive, he shouted for the second time that day: "I'm Majdi. Don't be afraid." All three men – with Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, wearing camouflage and headbands bearing the insignia of the Izzedine el Qassam brigades – were still alive, though one was badly injured and persuaded Mr Abed Rabbo to tighten the improvised bandage round his right arm. The youngest – perhaps 21 – was taking cover behind fallen masonry from where he could see the Israeli troops who had sent the visitor. Nervously, Mr Abed Rabbo told them: "They sent me back so I can take your weapons. They told me you are dead." It was the youngest who replied defiantly: "Tell the officer, 'If you're a man come up here'." When the soldiers had arrived at about 10am, Mr Abed Rabbo, 40, had no inkling that over the next 24 hours he would make four heart-stopping trips, shuttling across increasingly dangerous terrain between the Israeli forces and the three besieged but determined Hamas militants who had become his unwelcome next-door neighbours. He would recall every detail of an episode which, in the telling, resembles the more melodramatic kind of war movie, but which was all too real for a man who by the end had lost his house and thought (wrongly) that his wife and children were dead. He had also witnessed at too close quarters the last stand of the men from the Qassam brigades in the face of relentless Israeli ground attacks and Apache helicopter fire. Civilians were not killed in this episode, as they were in all too many during Operation Cast Lead. Instead, it offers a rare and detailed glimpse of an actual engagement between the Israeli military and Hamas fighters. And while it helps to reinforce Israel's contention that Hamas operates in built-up civilian areas, it also suggests that its own commanders were prepared to use civilians as human shields to protect Israeli troops.                                   More................................

U.S. Army troops stand guard over Sally Port One at Camp Delta where detainees are held at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

(REUTERS/Joe Skipper)
More Photos

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.     More.....................

Former Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon speaks out
on 9/11, NORAD and what should have happened on 9/11.

By Jeremy Baker

Former Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/europe/25pope.html?_r=2&hp

By Redress Information & Analysis

24 January 2009

Redress Information & Analysis highlights the influence of Israel’s stooges over the British government and the BBC and calls on readers urgently to help it name and shame members of “Friends of Israel” groups in the country.

With every passing day, the scale of the penetration by Israel’s network of stooges into the heart of the British government and media becomes increasingly apparent.

In just three weeks between 27 December 2008 and 17 January 2009, Israel murdered 1330 Palestinians in Gaza, including 437 children and 108 women, and injured 5450 others. Many of these innocent civilians were killed or maimed by phosphorous and other weapons, the use of which is internationally prohibited in civilian areas.

Yet, the “Friends of Israel” groups in Britain are showing no sign of shame or retreat. On the contrary, they are becoming more brazen in displaying the extent of their grip on the British government and the BBC. Just two examples will illustrate this.

• On 17 January, the day on which an Israeli tank attacked a United Nations-run school in Beit Lahiya, killing two children aged five and seven, Gordon Brown spewed out one of his most immoral and irresponsible announcements to date. In a desperate attempt to appease the Israeli war criminals and their stooges in Britain, he pledged to redeploy the British navy in the Middle East. “We'll send the Royal Navy to help fight [weapon] smuggling,” he said. Not to escort aid vessels or to defend the defenceless Palestinians of Gaza, but to deprive them of weapons with which they could defend themselves!

• On 23 January, the BBC, Britain’s state broadcaster, refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) – an umbrella organization for 13 humanitarian aid agencies – leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations. By convention, if all British broadcasters do not agree to carry a DEC appeal, none does, so the BBC deliberately scuppered the agencies’ attempt to provide urgent humanitarian aid for Gaza’s civilians.

It is a matter of national shame that agents of a foreign power and apologists for murder, in the shape of the “Friends of Israel” network of stooges, have achieved such a level of supremacy in Britain.

This need not be so. By and large, the British public has little sympathy for the racist, genocidal state of Israel.

Therefore, help us put an end to this national disgrace by naming and shaming Friends of Israel in government and other state bodies, political parties, the BBC and other media, think tanks, academic institutions and religious groups. Tell us who they and how you found out that they are Friends of Israel.

If you should harbour any doubt as to whether it is right to expose these “Friends of Israel”, then take a look at the document below to remind yourself of what these people are defending. 

Evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon