Op-Ed by Khalid Amayreh Special to Salem-News.com

Palestinians incinerated to death by Israel's White Phosphorous bombs.

Bloodsoaked carpets in a classroom at a UN school that was targeted and attacked by Israel. This photo and others in the story of the recent Israeli attack on Gaza courtesy: GazaBlogSpot

(OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM) - In an apparent effort to sound "balanced" and "unbiased," the London-based human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), has urged the international community to halt arms sales to the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement, Hamas.

A report issued by the group on Sunday, February 22nd, pointed out that arms supplied to "the two sides" were used in attacks on civilians and "civilian objects" which constituted war crimes.

Nonetheless, a careful examination of the report shows a clear propensity on the part of AI to create a false symmetry between Hamas, a small liberation movement resisting a decades-old foreign military occupation, and Israel, a manifestly criminal state armed to the teeth, which has been committing every conceivable crime under the sun for the purpose of maintaining its colonialist occupation and brutal domination over the Palestinian people.

To be sure, no one claims that Hamas is completely blameless. Targeting innocent civilians is unacceptable.

However, equating the resistance of a long-persecuted people languishing under a military occupation, even if wrongs are done, with an immensely superior state terror unjustifiably perpetrated by an occupying power is morally unconscionable, to say the very least.

Indeed, doing so would be analogous to equating European resistance to the attacking Nazi armies during the Second World War, with the Nazi aggression itself.

Well, with all due respect to AI and its efforts to safeguard and defend human rights, there is no legal or moral equation between a rape victim's right to defend herself against her attacker and the criminal act initiated by the rapist.

I am using this analogy because the enduring Israeli oppression meted out to the Palestinian people is an enduring act of rape.

Yes, firing home-made and other comparatively primitive projectiles on Israeli civilians is a regrettable act. However, the firing of these projectiles, which killed a few Israelis in 10 years of hostilities (virtually one Israeli per year), can't be compared with the nearly complete annihilation of Gaza's civilian infrastructure and wholesale murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

The excessive, disproportionate and often pornographic use of deadly violence against an essentially imprisoned and unprotected civilian population is more than just a mere miscalculation or faulty reasoning; it is rather a deliberate war crime the perpetrators of which are war criminals who ought to be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.

More to the point, it is imperative that one gives context if one is truly interested in producing an honest and objective analysis of the recent outrage in Gaza.

Hence, one must be honest enough to remember that Israel had been forcing the 1.5 million Gazans to choose between dying quietly by succumbing to a genocidal hermetic siege that pushed most of the region's inhabitants to the brink of a silent holocaust, or fighting back, using whatever primitive and extremely limited means at their disposal.

I strongly believe it is absurd and ludicrous, if not outright malicious, to compare Hamas with Israel as far as the use of violence is concerned.

Hamas is a small movement of persecuted Palestinians who have been on the receiving end of Israeli persecution and repression. Hamas poses no real or strategic threat to Israel, a military superpower which also, to a large extent, controls American politics and policies.

In its recent genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel used the deadliest weapons of death, including F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters, Merkava tanks, heavy artillery, depleted uranium, chemical agents that eat through the human flesh and eventually cause death, white Phosphorus, dart shells and a variety of other lethal weapons.

On the other hand, Hamas used notoriously primitive weapons. They say it was mainly to deter Israel from carrying out a genocide on a wider scale.

During that blitz, Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted civilian neighborhoods, apartment buildings, private homes, mosques, college dorms, university buildings, UN-run schools, grocery stores and businesses. It was a no-holds-barred rampage of murder and terror against an imprisoned and thoroughly starved civilian population.

As a result, over 1,300 Palestinians were murdered, or maimed and injured, many with life-long deformities. Moreover, thousands of other Gazans suffered long-lasting psychological traumas.

On the Israeli side, we are talking about just over a dozen Israeli fatalities, some of whom killed or injured by "friendly fire."

So, we are dealing with an extremely lopsided situation where the death ratio is 1 -100. Needless to say, one doesn't have to be a great military expert to realize that this is not really a war, it is rather a huge massacre.

This is why, AI is called upon to call the spade a spade and refrain from hiding behind technical jargons that not only fail to communicate the facts about what really happened in Gaza but also give a false impression of symmetry in guilt between Israel and Hamas.

More to the point, it is important to remember that Israel didn't impose the draconian blockade of Gaza as a retaliation for the largely innocuous firing of projectiles onto Israel. The criminal blockade was imposed, first and foremost, as a cruel punishment of Palestinians for electing a political party that Israel didn't like.

Hence, the imposition of the siege, which is continuing unabated, is per se a war crime or a crime against humanity.

The world betrayed them, the Arab world stood silent, with some Arab regimes even colluding with Israel to perfect the siege in the hope that Gazans would turn against Hamas and bring it down.

And the hypocritical West had the audacity to blame the victims while babbling, as usual, about Israel's right to defend itself.

This happened while an entire people was being imprisoned, starved, tormented and quietly exterminated, mainly for political reasons pertaining to Israeli territorial aggrandizement.

In short, it was the Nazi-like Israeli savaging of the Palestinians that made Palestinian resistance inevitable. The Palestinians, long tormented by this cruel occupation, have every legal and moral right to resist, using whatever means available to them.

Indeed, instead of blaming the victims for resisting their oppressors, the world, including AI, ought to tell Israel that it can't just incarcerate 1.5 million civilians within the confines of an open-air prison, surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, tanks, landmines, and other state-of-the-art machines of death, and then expect the victims to display love and understanding toward their tormentors and oppressors.

Israel did transform the Gaza Strip into a real concentration camp, by denying the prisoner population access to fuel, electricity, food, medicine, medical care, and basic consumer products.

Meanwhile, the Israeli death machine never stopped murdering innocent Palestinians, nearly on a daily basis.

It is essential that AI and other human rights groups take these facts into account when dealing with the situation in Gaza.

Failing to do so, by cowering before Israeli pressure, would further corrode AI image as the world's premier human rights organization.

IRIN News

Displaced families living in suburbs of Kabul under horrible conditions due to sever cold. Over 235,000 individuals are currently displaced in different parts of the country, down from about one million in 2002, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Feb 26, 2009 Freezing temperatures, hunger and sickness are unrelenting inside an old tent where Dadullah’s family has been living near Qala-e-Nau, the capital of the northwestern Afghan province of Badghis. The family abandoned their home in Moqur District because of recurrent armed conflict between insurgent groups and pro-government forces and prevalent food insecurity. "We left our homes out of despair and came here for survival," the 42-year-old father-of-four told IRIN outside his tent. "These children are hungry and feel cold," he said pointing to his young children huddled around him, shivering in the cold. A provincial official said about 400 families (around 2,000 individuals) had been displaced across the province over the past two months. Most of the displaced have set up tents or sought shelter in dilapidated houses in the outskirts of the provincial capital. Due to below zero temperatures and lack of access to safe drinking water, many internally displaced persons (IDPs), particularly children, are prone to diseases such as diarrhoea and pneumonia. "We have lost everything… I cannot even buy medicine for my sick children," said Dadullah. Dearth of aid Badghis is a remote province that has had little development and humanitarian activity over the past several years, making it one of the least developed of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Provincial government authorities said they had few resources at their disposal to mitigate the suffering of IDPs and that non-government aid agencies had little presence in the province. Access to vulnerable people in Badghis and large areas in the south, east and central parts of the country has been impeded by worsening insecurity, attacks on aid workers, rugged terrain and lack of transport infrastructure. The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS), which has extensive presence across the country, said its provincial department delivered live-saving relief to some IDPs but acknowledged the need for more. "These people [IDPs] need more emergency food aid, medical assistance, winter supplies and shelter," Abdul Rahim Raheen, ARCS’s provincial head, told IRIN. Amid a worsening humanitarian situation across Afghanistan largely resulting from conflict, drought and high food prices, the issue of how to meet the needs of IDPs remains a pressing challenge for the Afghan government and aid organisations. Over 235,000 individuals are currently displaced in different parts of the country, down from about one million in 2002, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). However, tens of thousands of IDPs are deprived of basic necessities and are in need of immediate assistance, Amnesty International, a London-based rights watchdog, said on 18 February.

www.uruknet.info?p=52175

Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters

Feb 26, 2009 KABUL -- The Taliban are willing to work with all Afghan groups to achieve peace, but the problems of Afghanistan can only be solved if foreign troops withdraw from the country, a senior insurgent leader said. The Taliban have made a strong come-back in the last three years, extending the scale and scope of their insurgency across the south and east and up to the fringes of the Afghan capital. U.S. officials admit they are not winning the war but, they say, neither are the Taliban. A stalemate has been reached with insurgents unable to overcome NATO's military might and foreign troops unable to stop Taliban roadside and suicide bombs. Repeated calls from Afghan President Hamid Karzai for talks with the Taliban have been rejected by the militants, but the statement from the senior Taliban commander signals a slightly softer stance towards the government while maintaining the customary hard line against the international troop presence. "We would like to take an Afghan strategy that is shared and large-scale, in consultation with all the Afghan groups, to reach positive and fruitful results," Mullah Mutassim, a former Taliban finance minister and member of the group's political council, told al-Samoud magazine in an interview conducted on Feb. 25. But, he said, the United States "has to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan as soon as possible, because the real starter of crises and complication of matters is the presence of foreign forces in the country. "If these forces leave, the problem will be over, the question will be finished, and peace will prevail," he was quoted as saying in the interview translated by the U.S.-based Site Intelligence Group which monitors jihadi web sites. Mutassim is regarded as close to fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar. The United States has some 38,000 troops in Afghanistan alongside some 30,000 troops from 40 other mostly NATO nations. President Barack Obama last week ordered another 17,000 U.S. troops deployed to try to break the stalemate and has pledged a new strategy in Afghanistan to increase development and at the same time ease regional tensions that contribute to the war. Mutassim said the armed struggle was the only way to drive out foreign forces and if the United States sent more troops to Afghanistan that would just lead to more soldiers being killed. "Obama's taking this unreasonable strategy indicates the plan of his bloody and fierce war strategy which will cause the death of many of his arrogant troops in the face of the holy Afghan jihad," he said. Despite his harsh words for the West, Mutassim only had praise for the government of Saudi Arabia which is often scorned by hardline Islamists for its close ties with the United States. Saudi Arabia, one of only three states to recognise the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, has hosted tentative talks between former Taliban and Afghan government officials aimed at exploring ways toward peace. But, Mutassim said, the Taliban were not for a share in power. "The Islamic Emirate demands to rule the country so as to establish an ... Islamic system in it, not in order to occupy high positions in the agent government," he said. Mutassim denied the austere Islamists movement had been against women's education while they were in power, but said the ravages of war had not allowed girls to be schooled. "I say that educating women is as necessary as educating men," he said. The Taliban have eased a number of their hard line edicts against such things as television and music in the areas they control making them, Mutassim said, more popular now than when they were in power. © Thomson Reuters 2009

www.uruknet.info?p=52190

Ma'an news

Feb 26, 2009 Bethlehem – Ma’an – The Israeli military has issued an order to confiscate farmland in order to build a 295-meter barbed-wire fence separating the West Bank town of Beit Ummar from an adjacent highway. According to the Beit Ummar’s municipal council, the town is appealing the decision in an Israeli military tribunal and with the head of the land department in the Civil Administration. Beit Ummar is located on the Jerusalem-Hebron road, south of the city of Bethlehem. Officials in the town say the residents are constantly attacked by the Israeli soldier staffing a checkpoint on the road at the entrance of the town. These attacks include nighttime raids on homes, shootings, and arrests. These incidents have also been reported to Israeli and Palestinian Authorities.

:: Article nr. 52188 sent on 18-nov-2009 06:23 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=52188

Tim King Salem-News.com

The media takes a beating for not reporting on the positive aspects of war; it is a notion that most people who have spent time in a combat theater find ridiculous.

Afghan culture: Kabul, 2007, two men hold hands by an old Soviet armored personnel carrier at a fort built by the British in the 19th Century. A lack of understanding of these diverse people does not pave a road to success. Salem-News.com Iraq/Afghanistan photos by Tim King

(SALEM, Ore.) - A friend sent an email today with a report from a London newspaper, stressing the "success" the United States is currently experiencing in Iraq, and speculating as to whether Obama would seek to "take credit" for the success.

101st Airborne soldiers in Iraq

The article talked about the media's obesession with death and conflict, and talked about all of the positive things like the rebuilding of schools, that the media always leaves out.

Based on the flow of information passing through our doors, in spite of this rosy article from the UK, people are still dying in Iraq, and the war is anything but successful. In fact, according to recent reports, Iraq is still very dangerous.

I was there over the summer just in time to see the beginning of the eliminiation/reduction of the "Sons of Iraq" program which is one of the few elements of the "Surge" that actually brought peace and stability to this country. (see: Could Removal of U.S. Support Shift Iraq's Peaceful Balance? (VIDEO))

Iraqi people told me that as soon as the U.S. pulls out, a civil war will reignite between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Tensions between the groups were relatively calm under Saddam Hussein who ruled the country with an iron hand.

My friend asked me what I thought of the London newspaper article and this is my reply to him:

Afghan girl waiting to see western military doctors during a MEDCAP operation in Kabul

Hi!

I have been there, you are right, and what I know I know from actually seeing it. The truth is, I didn't meet a single Iraqi (Who wasn't on the U.S. payroll) who liked George W. Bush or wanted the American presence there. They think we are just an aggressive military nation that attacks randomly and for strictly financial gain.

I think Iraq was a real serious mistake that has cost more lives than can ever be counted, and ruined our strategy of gaining any ground in Afghanistan.

The media doesn't cover things that didn't really happen, if that makes sense. I spent two months in Afghanistan asking to be shown a school that Americans rebuilt and five weeks in Iraq asking the same thing, and they were never able to get me close to one, Then I open emails from people who slam the press for not covering the rebuilding of Afghan and Iraqi schools. These groups would have us thinking that Americans are running all over these countries helping kids and it sadly, isn't the case at all. Best always,
Tim

I have spent time personally covering the more positive aspects of our miltary at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan and while we have had support in doing this, the number of entities beating down our door to see and support these 'positive' reports has been minimal.                                              More..........................

Edmund Connelly              

I’ve just finished listening to an enlightening 2-hour radio interview with hosts Mark Glenn and James Morris and guest Kevin MacDonald, and including an interesting call-in appearance from Stephen Sniegoski. The general topic was Jewish power, but one point in particular stood out: Recently, a premier architect and promoter of the neocon war against Iraq, “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle, has been escalating his campaign to deny the neocon role in American politics. Let me explain. 

Back in 1996, a group of Americans writing for an Israeli think tank published a paper for Israeli Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” In addition to calling for Saddam Hussein’s replacement, it also advised an overthrow or destabilization of the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran, thus leading to something akin to a “Greater US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.”  

One year later came the formation of The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neocon think tank based in Washington. William Kristol and Robert Kagan co-founded it as a non-profit educational organization, but many have accused it of playing a primary role in the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Later, the Pentagon hosted a unit called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), where Paul Wolfowitz joined Douglas Feith in propagating what many have claimed were false allegations about Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.  In the American media there were legions of neocon writers who repeated the party line about the need for a preemptive war against Hussein. Anyone following the efforts and words of the neocons likely recognized a sense of schizophrenia about describing who, exactly, these neocons were. Last year I wrote about this phenomenon of naming neocons (see also here), noting how such comfortable homes to neoconservatism as The Public Interest, The National Interest, and Commentary (published by The American Jewish Committee) began to ignore any connection between Jews and neoconservatism. For example, the Winter 2004 issue of The Public Interest had an essay titled "Conservatives and Neoconservatives." Yet author Adam Wolfson offered not even an oblique reference to Jews. Never mind that journal co-founder Irving Kristol is considered by many to be the father of neoconservatism, or that the other three editors over the forty-year life of the magazine have also been Jews.           MORE...............................

Our research team recently found evidence of U.S.-made weapons in Gaza, including the misuse of white phosphorus munitions. Urge Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to immediately call for an investigation into Israelʼs use of U.S. arms in Gaza.

		Investigate potential war crimes in Gaza. Palestinian Louai Sobeh, 10, is treated for burns at Shifa hospital in Gaza City on January 12, 2009.  © YASSER SAYMEH/AFP/Getty Images) A new report released just hours ago reveals that U.S.-made white phosphorus artillery shells among other U.S. weapons were found throughout Gaza. When white phosphorus munitions are used in densely-populated civilian areas as Israel has, it violates international humanitarian lawʼs prohibition on indiscriminate attacks and amounts to a war crime. In light of this new finding, we are urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to immediately call for: an investigation into Israelʼs use of U.S. arms in Gaza a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel and to urge the United Nations to impose an arms embargo on all parties in the conflict Samia Salman Al-Manay'a, 16 years old, was asleep in her home in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, when a phosphorus shell landed on the first floor of the house on January10th. Ten days later, from her hospital bed, she spoke to our delegation. "The pain is piercing. It's as though a fire is burning in my body. It's too much for me to bear. In spite of all the medicine they are giving me the pain is still so strong." Since 2001, the U.S. has been the largest supplier of arms to Israel. The U.S. has also provided considerable funding each year for Israel to buy arms despite U.S. legislation that restricts such aid to consistently gross human rights violators. Since 2002 Israel received over $21 billion in U.S. military and security assistance. Put simply, Israel's military intervention in the Gaza Strip has been equipped to a large extent by US-supplied weapons, munitions and military equipment paid for with U.S. taxpayersʼ money. Even after the start of the current conflict and reports of serious violations of international humanitarian law by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, U.S. authorities continued to authorize large shipments of U.S. munitions, including white phosphorus munitions, to Israel. In January, Amnesty called for a suspension of all arms transfers to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a serious risk that such equipment will be used for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. The Department of State should lead the call for accountability. If we suspect our weapons are being used in attacks that are indiscriminately killing civilians, we must act. Urge Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to immediately call for an investigation into Israelʼs use of U.S. arms in Gaza and a suspension of military aid. Last month you called for an independent investigation into all parties involved in the conflict in Gaza. We are happy to report that your voice was heard. Over 45,000 messages were sent to Secretary Clinton and UN Representative Susan Rice, who highlighted the importance of an investigation. Additionally, three Members of Congress, including the highest ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited Gaza and witnessed firsthand the humanitarian devastation. Sincerely, Larry Cox Executive Director Amnesty International USA

By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.

Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.

The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated," said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.

"If one was to use one's imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get their kicks in right now for fear that they won't be able to later," he said.

"Certainly in my experience there have been many, many more reported incidents of abuse since the inauguration," added Ghappour, who has visited Guantanamo six times since late September and based his comments on his own observations and conversations with both prisoners and guards.More..............................

by Bill Berkowitz / February 21st, 2009

While working on Bad Faith—a yet-to-be-completed book focusing on the financial forces behind the Religious Right—Mike Reynolds* got wind of the Nashville, Tennessee-based America 21, a non-profit political action committee that hopes to bring America to God by encouraging ”moral leadership from our churches” to be heard ”in the halls of Congress and across this nation.”

According to Reynolds, an investigative reporter whose work on the religious right has been featured in Rolling Stone, US News & World Report, and 60 Minutes, “the group caught my eye because it was involved with holding support rallies for Judge Roy Moore, who, as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court defied a federal order to remove his 5,300-pound monument of the Ten Commandments from inside the state’s judicial building.” The statue was later removed from the building and Moore was removed from the bench.

“Later,” said Reynolds, “I discovered that America 21 was involved with former Texas Congressman Tom Delay and the Republican Party’s uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.”

According to Reynolds, America 21 “was run by an old anti-abortion ambulance-chasing lawyer and lobbyist named J Thomas Smith… [who] was working on behalf of some Christian evangelicals that were looking to set up shop in Kurdistan.” Those discoveries led him to Douglas and Marilyn Layton and Servant Group International, a project run out of the Belmont Church in Nashville.

While Franklin Graham was preparing to provide relief to beleaguered Iraqis (and to find Christian converts), Servant Group International had already been in Iraq for more than ten years. Again, Reynolds:

In September 2003, four months after US forces defeated Saddam Hussein, 350 evangelical pastors and church leaders assembled in Kirkuk, welcomed by Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani. During the gathering, George Grant, the American director of the Classical School of The Medes, declared that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord over all things; He is Lord over every Mullah, every Ayatollah, every Imam, and every Mahdi pretender; He is Lord over the whole of the earth even Iraq!’                                     More.................................

by Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar

The worst is not; So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’

– William Shakespeare

It is said that today is pregnant with tomorrow. What and how we have done things in the past has shaped out today and what and how we do things today determine the shape of our future. To see into the future of our economies, with some small degree of certainty, we have to pay attention to what is happening around us and what we do.

But to get an idea of how the future will be, one has to have a real picture of the present. This is important since a false picture will present us with false alternatives, on which we act which in turn will result in unexpected outcomes (i.e., future that we are not prepared for).

It is not always easy to see through all the false pictures and data that we are constantly presented with. For example, in Norway on February 18th, the real-estate association came out with the statement that the housing crisis was almost over and the bottom was reached. This was plastered all over the place. Next day on February 19, the Norwegian Centre for Statistics came out with its own forecast; stating that house prices will continue to fall for the next year and that situation will deteriorate further.

It was clear to some of us that the real-estate association was putting out false information to drum-up business for its members. But if banks, industrialists, and even politicians also send out false and misleading information, then the average person will make decisions that may be contrary to his or her best interests.More............................

Israel has issued a warning for hundreds of Palestinians to evacuate east Jerusalem (al-Quds) before demolishing their homes in the area.

"The owners of 80 houses in the al-Bustan neighborhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they are illegal," said Hatem Abdel Kader, an official responsible for the city's affairs in the Palestinian government.

Kader told AFP that "The (Jerusalem) municipality used this as a pretext to issue the demolition orders despite appeals by the residents."

He said that several of the houses served with demolition orders were built before 1967, when Israel captured east al-Quds during the Six Day War but that numerous extensions have been built since.

"The reason (for the notices) is not legal, but political," he said. "Israel wants to create a demographic disequilibrium in the city."

This is while a Palestinian resident said he received a demolition notice after failing to get a building permit from the Israeli authorities.

"I built my house a year and a half ago," he said. "I asked for a permit but never received authorization."

Israeli authorities have reportedly demolished some 350 houses in the neighborhood since 2004 under the same pretext.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=86477&sectionid=351020202
SB/MMN

Shahid Alam* - Feb 22, 2009

Critics of Zionism and Israel -- including a few Israelis -- have charted an inverse exceptionality, which describes an Israel that is aberrant, violates international norms with near impunity, engages in systematic abuses of human rights, wages wars at will, and has expanded its territories through conquest. This is not the place to offer an exhaustive list of these negative Israeli exceptions, but we will list a few that are the most egregious.

As an exclusionary settler-colony, Israel does not stand alone in the history of European expansion overseas. But it is the only one of its kind in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since the 16th century, Europeans have established exclusionary settler- colonies in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand -- among other places -- whose white colonists displaced or nearly exterminated the indigenous population to recreate societies in the image of those they had left behind. By the late 19th century, however, this genocidal European expansion was running out of steam, in large part because there remained few surviving Neolithic societies that white colonists could exterminate with ease. In tropical Africa and Asia, the climate and present pathogens were not particularly kind to European settlers.

The Zionist decision in 1897 to establish an exclusionary colonial-settler state in Palestine marked a departure from this trend. In 1948, some 50 years later, Jewish colonists from the West would create the only state in the 20th century founded on conquest and ethnic cleansing. Israel is also the only exclusionary colonial-settler state established by the modern Europeans anywhere in the Old World.

In Israel, moreover, settler-colonialism is not something that belongs to its past. After their victory in the June war of 1967, the Israelis decided to extend their colonial-settler project to the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights. In recent decades, the demand for another massive round of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the "occupied territories" -- and even inside Israel's pre-1967 borders -- has moved from the extremist fringes of the Israeli right wing to the mainstream of Israeli politics.

Israel is most likely the only country in the world that insists on defining citizenship independently of geography. On the one hand, it has continued to deny the right of return -- and hence rights of citizenship -- to millions of Palestinians who or whose parents and grandparents were expelled from Palestine in two massive rounds of ethnic cleansing since 1948. At the same time, under its law of return, Israel automatically and instantly grants citizenship to applicants who are Jews, persons of Jewish parentage, or Jewish converts. Under this law, as Mazin Qumsiyeh puts it succinctly, "no Jew emigrates to Israel; Jews [including converts] 'return' [hence the name of the law]." In addition, Jewish immigrants receive generous support from the state upon their arrival in Israel. In other words, Israel turns internationally recognised rights of residence and citizenship on their head, denying these rights to those who have earned them by birth, while granting them freely to those who claim them because of ancient religious myths.

In recent years, critics have increasingly charged Israel with practising legal discrimination against Palestinians. Such discrimination is massive and blatant in the occupied territories where Israel has established Jewish-only settlements, connected to pre-1967 Israel by Jewish-only roads. Since June 1967, the Palestinians in these territories have suffered under a system of military occupation that shows even less regard for their human rights than South Africa's apartheid system. Former US president Jimmy Carter has recently dared to acknowledge the existence of apartheid in the occupied territories in the title of his new book, Palestine : Peace not Apartheid. Instantly, America's mainstream media -- led by Zionist censors -- began savagely attacking president Carter for mentioning the unmentionable. Not a few political and academic careers in the United States have met a premature end for lesser offences. Jimmy Carter, the octogenarian former president, had little to lose.                                                    More.............................

100 year-old man attacked by Israeli army dog

In the early morning of February 20th at 2am, Israeli Forces invaded the town of Tamoun, located in the Tubas region of the northern occupied West Bank. Around 50 soldiers in seven jeeps surrounded two houses in the town, firing sound bombs and live ammunition before breaking into the residences.

During the course of the invasion, an army attack dog mauled the face of Salem Fadel Bani Odeh, aged 100 while he lay helpless in his bed. Two men, Na’el Odeh Bani Odeh, aged 23, Muhamad Mustafa Bani Odeh, aged 25, were also arrested by Israeli Occupation Forces. The windows of a nearby parked car were all shot out by army gunfire.

Salem Fadel Bani Odeh awoke to the explosions of sound bombs and live bullets. The door to his home was smashed down by soldiers, who entered the house and ordered everyone outside. But Salem, who is partially paralyzed and bedridden, could not move. As the soldiers searched the house, an army dog leaped up onto his bed and began biting his face and chest. Though nearly ten soldiers were inside the same room, they did nothing to stop the attack, and the dog continued to knaw on Salem’s face. Finally, after more than half an hour, the soldiers stopped the dog and called for an ambulance. Salem was taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where he remains in moderate condition with parts of one ear bitten off and bites on his face, chest and right shoulder.

According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli army has admitted that the incident occurred.

Source

Charles Bremner in Paris With gloom all around, President Sarkozy’s Government might have chosen another moment for its latest campaign. This one tells the French people to stop drinking wine. To the anger of the drinks industry and disbelief of many patriots, the Ministry of Health has made alcohol one of the chief villains in a drive against cancer. “The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged,” say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise the chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 per cent, claims the ministry’s brochure. Forget those 1980s findings that antioxidants in wine were good for health, said the French experts. “Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you,” said Dominique Maraninchi, INCA’s president. RELATED LINKS Men's alcohol-linked deaths double in 16 years Health chief wants ban on under-15s drinking Authorities elsewhere have been telling people in recent years to go dry if they want to stay healthy. But the advice was especially sobering, coming from the Government of France, a country where wine is part of life and the national heritage. The pleasantly illustrated ministry brochure makes grim reading. The INCA collated hundreds of international studies and summarised the relation between types of cancer with food, drink and lifestyle. Apart from wine, the dangerous stuff is red meat, charcuterie and salt. A pavé de rum-steakmight not sound so mouth-watering after reading: “The risk of colon-rectal cancer rises by 29 per cent per 100-gramme portion of red meat per day and 21 per cent per 50-gramme portion of charcuterie.” Alcohol facilitates cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus, colon-rec-tum and breast, say the guidelines. The wine producers are crying foul, accusing the health lobby of trying to kill one of the glories of the nation. They note the suspicious coincidence that France now has its first teetotal President. Mr Sarkozy sips mineral water and orange juice when all around him are knocking back the champagne and burgundy. “This persecution of wine has to stop,” said the General Association of Wine Producers. The growers say that the scientific evidence is contradictory and they point to a World Health Organisation study which found that moderate consumption helped to prevent cancer. Xavier de Volontat, president of the wine producers’ assocation in the southwestern Languedoc region, said: “The extremists must not be allowed to take consumers hostage . . . Wine consumption has dropped by 50 per cent over the last 20 years in France but cancer has increased. You have to admit, that’s a paradox.” “We never said that alcohol is not dangerous for health,” Mr de Volontat said. “We are for responsible, reasonable and moderate consumption . . . It is not in our interest to see our consumers dying of cancer or in car accidents.”

16 February, 2009
Today's Zaman

BRUSSELS -- According to Finkelstein, Israel, a state built on the ashes of the Holocaust, is now committing a holocaust against Palestinians in Gaza. In a telephone interview with Today's Zaman, Finkelstein said Israel was a "terrorist state" created by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. Praising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish people for their courage in supporting Palestinians, Finkelstein referred to Israel as a "satanic" and "lunatic" state. Finkelstein's parents survived the Nazi camps in World War II and then immigrated to the U.S.

After his book "The Holocaust Industry," in which he accused many prominent Jewish leaders of abusing the victims of the Holocaust, was published, Finkelstein was almost declared persona non grata by America's influential Zionist circles.

Q: What does Israel want to achieve with this operation?

A: Basically, Israel wants to achieve two goals: to restore what it calls its deterrence capacity -- that means to spread fear among Arab states about itself. This is a core principle of Israeli strategic doctrine. Arab states have to be afraid of Israel, afraid of its military might, and Arabs should do what Israelis want. They shall follow Israeli orders.

Israel's military deterrence suffered a setback in May 2000, when Hezbollah succeeded to expel Israeli occupying forces from south Lebanon. Almost immediately in the aftermath of the failure, Israel planned another war with Hezbollah to re-establish its deterrence capacity. In 2006, after long preparation and using its air force, Israel suffered another ignominious defeat in Lebanon against Hezbollah.                        More..........................

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY...

01.16.2009 | ?

...PLEASE FORWARD...

BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS

Hitler Israel now









CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT




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