You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from presidents, kings, princes, sheiks and prime ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, after all, to have the guts to write an open letter to the president of the United States of America?
What has triggered this letter is a picture of your Excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004–i.e., before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history.
The World Likud movement held a cornerstone-laying ceremony yesterday for the expansion of the neighborhood of Nof Zion, despite – or possibly because of – American pressure against building in East Jerusalem. The Jewish settlement is in the middle of the Arab village of Jabal Mukkaber. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem municipality razed two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem yesterday.
The US military has allowed journalists into its newly expanded secret detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan this week.
The base has been described by campaigners as Guantanamo Bay’s “more evil twin” and the allegations of torture and murder within its secretive walls continue to this day.
The US claims this is proof of its determination to provide greater transparency and openness in its policy of extraordinary rendition and detention without trial.
The claim was somewhat undermined by the fact that the touring journalists had no access to the hundreds of inmates held at the facility.
“Hamas is not obliged under international law to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”
Video posted November 19, 2009
(Danish is spoken 35 seconds into the video)
Transcript
Norman Finkelstein: Hamas is not obliged under international law to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
If you go back for example 1947 Gandhi said he’ll accept the reality of Pakistan, but he would never accept the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan.
Hamas is not expected to be held to a higher level of diplomacy than Gandhi..
Gandhi said: ‘Pakistan is a reality which I’m forced to accept, but I don’t accept it as legitimate.’ And that’s the same position of Hamas. They said we’ll solve the conflict on the June ’67 border.
Adam Holm: ‘This is what makes Jerusalem unwary of Hamas because they keep saying how can we have a neighbor which doesn’t recognize our legitimacy.
Norman Finkelstein: But you see the problem is; listen to yourself,.. your own language..
You’re just spouting Israeli propaganda..
Why are you saying ‘Jerusalem’?
East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory under international law, that was the ruling of the International Court of Justice since July 2004, and if you look at the Goldstone Report that just came out a month ago, they refer to East-Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory.
But now you’ve given over Jerusalem to the Israelis..
You’re just repeating Israeli propaganda; they have no title under international law to east Jerusalem
Adam Holm: But speaking about my Israeli propaganda, which I’ll refute, but anyway.
Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies – Negotiations with Israel will achieve nothing, jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi told Reuters in an interview published on Thursday.
Through written messages passed from the prison via his lawyer, Bargouthi urged Palestinians to embark on popular and diplomatic campaigns to achieve statehood, the news agency reported.
A former horse riding school in the tiny Baltic state of Lithuania was used as a secret CIA prison to hold and interrogate top al-Qaeda terrorists, it has been claimed.By Andrew Osborn in Moscow, The Telegraph/UK, Nov 19, 2009
A photo taken on November 19, 2009 shows a training center of the Lithuanian State Security Department, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, in Antavilis near Vilnius Photo: AFP/GETTY
The allegations have sparked a parliamentary inquiry after President Dalia Grybauskaite said she harboured “indirect suspicions” that such a facility existed.
According to unnamed former intelligence operatives quoted by ABC News, the CIA built the secret jail in 2004 and used it for more than a year, flying in at least eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has asked the United Nations Secretary-General to make sure that recommendations of a key report about war crimes committed during the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces in Gaza at the beginning of 2009, are properly followed up.
Kabul, Afghanistan — Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies — Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid — that helped to swell the election coffers of President warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim as well as the family business of his running mate, the country’s new vice president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim.
By William A. Cook, uruknet.info, November 19, 2009
“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they (Zionists) are used to being untouchable.” (Gilad Atzmon, “Britain Must de-Zionist Itself Immediately,” Nov. 17, 2009, MWC News).
This week the British people listened to the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”
Speaking about the Ft. Hood killings, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated, “The investigation is ongoing to figure out what would motivate an individual to carry out the type of act that this major carried out.” Of course, it goes without saying that in examining into motive, Gibbs is not justifying what the alleged killer, Major Nidal Hasan, did. (See my article “Motivation vs. Justification.”)
As the investigation into motive progresses, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the U.S. military’s policy on conscientious-objector status played in the Ft. Hood horror.
Peace and Justice Post 
Israel building Jewish homes with one hand, destroying Arab homes with the other
November 22, 2009Nir Hasson, Haaretz/Israel, Nov 19, 2009
The World Likud movement held a cornerstone-laying ceremony yesterday for the expansion of the neighborhood of Nof Zion, despite – or possibly because of – American pressure against building in East Jerusalem. The Jewish settlement is in the middle of the Arab village of Jabal Mukkaber. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem municipality razed two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem yesterday.
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