| Al Jazeera, Sep 27, 2008 |
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The Palestinian president and Arab countries have criticised Israel over its settlement expansion policy in the West Bank during debates at the United Nations. In a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, Mahmoud Abbas deplored as “racial terrorism” what he said were daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians, and urged the international community to take action. “[The settlements] will not allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state because they divide the West Bank into at least four cantons,” he said. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, whose country formally called for the debate, said Israel must halt settlement activity and obey international law. “Settlement makes the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible,” he said. “The only path to Israel’s security is peace and it is time for Israel to understand that it cannot continue to exempt itself from behaving in accordance to international law,” Prince Saud said. The Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League urged the UN Security Council to encourage the faltering peace process by demanding an end to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. In August, Israel approved the construction of 400 new homes in a Jewish neighbourhood in east Jerusalem and invited bids for the construction of another 416 settler homes in the occupied West Bank. The Middle East diplomatic Quartet on Friday pressed Israel and the Palestinians to seal a peace deal this year, but also expressed “deep concern” over continuing settlement expansion in the West Bank. A ministerial session of Quartet members, the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN, ended with a call on the parties “to make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008”. Quartet members “expressed deep concern about increasing [Israeli] settlement activity, which has a damaging impact on the negotiating environment and is an impediment to economic recovery and called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.” They also reiterated that the parties “must avoid actions that undermine confidence and could prejudice the outcome of the negotiations”. In Annapolis, Maryland last November, Israel and the Palestinians revived negotiations toward resolving core problems such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and refugees, by the end of 2008. Settlement expansion Settlement expansion has nearly doubled since 2007, despite Israel’s pledge to freeze such activities, Peace Now, the Israeli watchdog, said last month. “The situation necessitates a serious stand by the international community and a clear call upon Israel to begin withdrawing its settlers and dismantling its settlements,” Abbas said.
“It was recognised [in Annapolis] that this was a prerequisite for allowing negotiations towards ending the conflict to progress,” he said.But Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s UN Ambassador, told council members that while the settlements are a “delicate issue,” they “are not an obstacle to peace”. “They have been used here as another instrument to bash Israel instead of addressing the realities on the ground,” she said. “There is much that those in the region can do to support that peace process, but it is not about more UN meetings. “It is, first and foremost, about commitment to prepare the people of the region for the price of peace, to accept the true meaning of peace,” Shalev said. The West Bank has been under military occupation by Israel since 1967 and at least 400,000 Israelis have been settled in the territory, including East Jerusalem. The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, whose country currently chairs the European Union, restated the EU view that Israeli settlements, “wherever in the occupied Palestinian territories, are illegal under international law.” He added that settlement “harms the credibility of the process started in Annapolis and affects the viability of the future Palestinian state.” Reaching out Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, shifted the focus of the debate away from settlements, instead urging Arab countries to “consider ways they might reach out to Israel”. She said the Arab world needed to fully understand that: “Israel belongs to the Middle East and will remain” in the Middle East. Meanwhile, a group of 21 leading aid agencies said on Thursday that the Middle East Quartet was “losing its grip” on the peace process and must radically revise its approach. The aid agencies said the Quartet has failed to hold Israel to account for expanding settlements in the West Bank. |
Archive for the ‘Zionist Israel’ Category
UN debates West Bank settlements
September 27, 2008
Israeli academic injured in bomb blast
September 27, 2008By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
The Independent, Thursday, 25 September 2008
One of Israel’s leading centre-left academics was injured early today when a pipe bomb blew up outside his home in an attack which police suspect was the work of Jewish extreme right-wing extremists.
The victim of the attack was Professor Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and recent winner of the prestigious Israel prize, who has long opposed Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.
Police said they had found fliers in the area of the attack offering 1.1m shekels (£173,000) to anyone who kills a member of the long established organisation Peace Now, of which Mr Sternhell is a veteran member.
The professor was in hospital tonight with minor shrapnel wounds in one of his legs. Police said that the explosive had been planted on the doorstep of his Jerusalem home and was detonated when he opened the door.
Tzipi Livni, foreign minister and the prospective Prime Minister, said that the attack was “intolerable” and could not be glossed over. Ehud Barak, the Labour leader and Defence Minister also strongly condemned the attack “from a dark corner” of Israeli society against a “very gifted person who never shies away from expressing his opinion.”
In a statement which coupled condemnation of the attack on Professor Sternhell with a reference to the apparently growing instances of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, Peace Now said: “Those who don’t enforce the law on violent settlers… will find himself with a Jewish terror organization in the heart of Israel.”
In contrast with the West Bank, political violence by right wing extremists inside Israel has been relatively rare-with the notable exception of the assassination of the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv in 1995. Another extremist killed a member of Peace Now with a grenade at a 1983 peace protest.
The future is one nation
September 27, 2008The two-state approach in the Middle East has failed. There is a fairer, more durable solution
- The Guardian, Thursday September 25 2008
Imagine the scene: the United Nations general assembly meets to discuss a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Unlike previous resolutions, which have been based on a Jewish state in most of historic Palestine with Palestinians relegated to the remnants, this one calls for a new state, covering what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, whose present and former inhabitants are equal under the law. Such a resolution has, in fact, already been drafted and discussions have begun to place it on the agenda at the UN.
The one-state solution is now part of mainstream discourse. Increasingly, Palestinians – and some Israelis – support it as the only alternative to a Palestinian state subordinate to Israel. One-state groups have sprung up and conferences and studies are under way.
A UN resolution is the logical next step, underlining the issue’s global importance and exposing the inequity and dishonesty of the two-state solution, to replace it with something fairer and more durable. It would be encapsulated in the following clauses, part of the draft UN resolution for a one-state solution, which has been under discussion for six months. Its principal authors are my fellow Palestinian Karl Sabbagh and myself:
“The general assembly notes the failure of recent efforts made by regional and international parties to resolve the conflict through the creation of two states; Recalling the recent history of the former [Palestine] Mandate territory as a land where Arabs and Jews shared equal rights of habitation; Reviewing Israel’s non-compliance with UN Resolution 194, requiring Israel to repatriate the Palestinian refugees, and its illegal conduct in the occupied territories.
“Calls upon representatives of Israel and Palestine to agree on behalf of their peoples to share the land between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan … by setting up a state which is democratic and secular, in which the rights of all people living within its borders to freedom of worship, security, and equality under the law are enshrined in a new constitution, to replace the separate forms of government that apply currently in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.”
The two-state adherents will not approve. David Miliband at the Labour party conference this week continued to argue for a two-state solution. Tomorrow in New York, Mahmoud Abbas will petition George Bush for the same thing. Both are on a hiding to nothing.
The pace of Israeli colonisation, unimpeded since 1967, redoubled after the Oslo accords, demonstrating Israel’s aversion to a two-state solution. By 2007, the West Bank Jewish settler population had reached 282,000. In East Jerusalem, it rose to 200,000, massively Judaising the city and precluding it as a Palestinian capital. Today the West Bank is a jigsaw of settlements, bypass roads and barriers, making an independent state impossible. Gaza is a besieged enclave. In 2006 the UN special rapporteur in the Palestinian territories concluded that “a two-state solution is unattainable”. Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker, told the Israeli daily Haaretz in June that “time was running out for the two-state solution”.
Scores of others have articulated the same view. The peace process predicated on the two-state solution is stagnant, and a momentum has started towards the obvious alternative, a unitary state. This month a new forum, encompassing Palestinian personalities from the occupied territories and outside, has published a petition in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat to halt negotiations, annex the territories to Israel and demand equal rights in one state. This echoes many recent Palestinian demands to dissolve the Palestinian Authority and start an anti-apartheid campaign for equal rights.
The UN high commissioner for human rights has referred us to Robert Serry, the UN official responsible for the peace process, who stated that UN policy must conform to the Palestinian formal position, the two-state solution. A change in that position is not unthinkable. For our resolution to be discussed at the UN, a member state would have to present it, and several are privately known to support our aims.
A unitary state is inevitable. Establishing an exclusive state defined along ethnic-religious lines and excluding its previous inhabitants was unjust and ultimately unsustainable. No political acrobatics will alter this. The sooner the UN, which unwisely created Israel in the first place, takes charge of the consequences, the better it will be for Palestinians, for Israelis and for the region as a whole.
· Ghada Karmi is research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter University g.karmi@exeter.ac.uk
Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran
September 26, 2008US president told Israeli prime minister he would not back attack on Iran, senior European diplomatic sources tell Guardian
- guardian.co.uk,
- Thursday September 25 2008 19:02 BST
A view of the nuclear enrichment plant of Natanz in central Iran. Photograph: EPA
Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.
The then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used the occasion of Bush’s trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the state’s founding to raise the issue in a one-on-one meeting on May 14, the sources said. “He took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office”, they added.
The sources work for a European head of government who met the Israeli leader some time after the Bush visit. Their talks were so sensitive that no note-takers attended, but the European leader subsequently divulged to his officials the highly sensitive contents of what Olmert had told him of Bush’s position.
Bush’s decision to refuse to offer any support for a strike on Iran appeared to be based on two factors, the sources said. One was US concern over Iran’s likely retaliation, which would probably include a wave of attacks on US military and other personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The other was US anxiety that Israel would not succeed in disabling Iran’s nuclear facilities in a single assault even with the use of dozens of aircraft. It could not mount a series of attacks over several days without risking full-scale war. So the benefits would not outweigh the costs.
Iran has repeatedly said it would react with force to any attack. Some western government analysts believe this could include asking Lebanon’s Shia movement Hizbollah to strike at the US.
“It’s over ten years since Hizbollah’s last terror strike outside Israel, when it hit an Argentine-Israel association building in Buenos Aires [killing 85 people]”, said one official. “There is a large Lebanese diaspora in Canada which must include some Hizbollah supporters. They could slip into the United States and take action”.
Even if Israel were to launch an attack on Iran without US approval its planes could not reach their targets without the US becoming aware of their flightpath and having time to ask them to abandon their mission.
“The shortest route to Natanz lies across Iraq and the US has total control of Iraqi airspace”, the official said. Natanz, about 100 miles north of Isfahan, is the site of an uranium enrichment plant.
In this context Iran would be bound to assume Bush had approved it, even if the White House denied fore-knowledge, raising the prospect of an attack against the US.
Several high-level Israeli officials have hinted over the last two years that Israel might strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent them being developed to provide sufficient weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Iran has always denied having such plans.
Olmert himself raised the possibility of an attack at a press conference during a visit to London last November, when he said sanctions were not enough to block Iran’s nuclear programme.
“Economic sanctions are effective. They have an important impact already, but they are not sufficient. So there should be more. Up to where? Up until Iran will stop its nuclear programme,” he said.
The revelation that Olmert was not merely sabre-rattling to try to frighten Iran but considered the option seriously enough to discuss it with Bush shows how concerned Israeli officials had become.
Bush’s refusal to support an attack, and the strong suggestion he would not change his mind, is likely to end speculation that Washington might be preparing an “October surprise” before the US presidential election. Some analysts have argued that Bush would back an Israeli attack in an effort to help John McCain’s campaign by creating an eve-of-poll security crisis.
Others have said that in the case of an Obama victory, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, the main White House hawk, would want to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme in the dying weeks of Bush’s term.
During Saddam Hussein’s rule in 1981, Israeli aircraft successfully destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak shortly before it was due to start operating.
Last September they knocked out a buildings complex in northern Syria, which US officials later said had been a partly constructed nuclear reactor based on a North Korean design. Syria said the building was a military complex but had no links to a nuclear programme.
In contrast, Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are officially described as intended only for civilian purposes, are dispersed around the country and some are in fortified bunkers underground.
In public, Bush gave no hint of his view that the military option had to be excluded. In a speech to the Knesset the following day he confined himself to telling Israel’s parliament: “America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman, tonight reacted to the Guardian’s story saying: “The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table. Your unnamed European source attributed words to the prime minister that were not spoken in any working meeting with foreign guests”.
Three weeks after Bush’s red light, on June 2, Israel mounted a massive air exercise covering several hundred miles in the eastern Mediterranean. It involved dozens of warplanes, including F-15s, F-16s and aerial refueling tankers.
The size and scope of the exercise ensured that the US and other nations in the region saw it, said a US official, who estimated the distance was about the same as from Israel to Natanz.
A few days later, Israel’s deputy prime minister, Shaul Mofaz, told the paper Yediot Ahronot: “If Iran continues its programme to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The window of opportunity has closed. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme.”
The exercise and Mofaz’s comments may have been designed to boost the Israeli government and military’s own morale as well, perhaps, to persuade Bush to reconsider his veto. Last week Mofaz narrowly lost a primary within the ruling Kadima party to become Israel’s next prime minister. Tzipi Livni, who won the contest, takes a less hawkish position.
The US announced two weeks ago that it would sell Israel 1,000 bunker-busting bombs. The move was interpreted by some analysts as a consolation prize for Israel after Bush told Olmert of his opposition to an attack on Iran. But it could also enhance Israel’s attack options in case the next US president revives the military option.
The guided bomb unit-39 (GBU-39) has a penetration capacity equivalent to a one-tonne bomb. Israel already has some bunker-busters.
Map showing nuclear activity in Iran
MIDEAST: Everyone Loses in the War of Silencing
September 24, 2008By Mohammed Omer | Inter-Press Service
GAZA CITY, Sep 23, – So much is missing as you walk down the street along the shops of Gaza. Food and medicines kept out by the blockade enforced by Israel; but also newspapers once a part of the street landscape.
Al-Hayat-Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam, two newspapers loyal to Fatah, are not around any more. And for once, you couldn’t blame the Israelis for censorship.
Of the two big Palestinian territories, Gaza is ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank by Fatah. Fighting between the two groups has led to a silencing of voices on both sides.
Hamas affiliated police forces banned three newspapers in Gaza Jul. 28 this year; of them Al-Quds has now been allowed in. Earlier in June the West Bank authorities banned Falsteen and Al-Risalah, two newspapers affiliated with Hamas.
“We have given them some guidelines to report more professionally, but they have refused to deal with us,” Hamas spokesman Taher Al-Nounno told IPS, speaking of the Fatah publications. “The newspapers have been publishing lies and instigating unrest.”
In the West Bank, Nimir Hamad, political advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said “Al-Rasalah and Falasteen are both propagandist papers calling for strife, they are publishing extremist and fundamentalist thinking.”
Journalists and camera crews working for a Hamas-owned television station in the West Bank were arrested. So were journalists working for Fatah-supporting media in Gaza. Both sides have closed radio stations, and both have confiscated media equipment.
The international watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, Reporters Without Borders) has said that at least nine media outlets have ceased operating in Gaza since July 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza after a landslide win in elections in January 2006. Of these outlets, three were state-owned, and six privately owned.
The Basic Law of the Palestine Authority (PA) declares that every person has the right to freedom of thought and expression. But in 1995 the PA passed a law against criticism of the Palestinian Authority or its president. That law is now being implemented in the attacks on newspaper offices and journalists.
The law does not apply to foreign media. But Human Rights Watch has noted that an increasing number of independent journalists are opting out of the region because the risks are too many.
And far too often now, nobody is around to report the many abuses that take place. “Over the past 12 months, Palestinians in both places (the West Bank and Gaza) have suffered serious abuses at the hands of their own security forces, in addition to persistent abuses by the occupying power, Israel,” HRW has stated.
The HRW report says that since taking control of Gaza last year, Hamas has tortured detainees, carried out arbitrary arrests of political opponents, and clamped down on freedom of expression and assembly. And that Fatah has done exactly the same.
Israel brought censorship to this Promised Land long back. In 1971 then Israeli prime minister Golda Meir wiped the name of Palestine off all maps produced in Israel. Israeli occupation forces declared all Palestinian symbols like flags and posters illegal.
During the first Intifadah (1987-1992), the name given to the Palestinian uprising, and again in the second (since September 2000), Israeli authorities have closely censored Palestinian publications, ordering removal of ‘security’ related information.
Israeli authorities have arrested media personnel, beaten them up and denied them press cards. RSF says Israeli soldiers have shot at least nine Palestinian journalists.
But beyond Israel and the Palestinian factions, the blame for censorship lies with those champions of freedom, the European Union and the United States, HRW says. That arises from the funding and the political protection they have given to security forces, it says. (END/2008)
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies
September 22, 2008A New and Revealing Study of the Influence of the Neocons
By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON | Counterpunch, Sep 20 / 21, 2008
Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Enigma Editions, Norfolk, Virginia, 2008
Not a few honest political analysts have long recognized the tight relationship between the Israel-U.S. partnership and the disastrous Bush administration adventures throughout the Middle East, including its backing for Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinians. Stephen Sniegoski has had the persistence to ferret out mountains of impossible-to-challenge evidence that this Israel-U.S. connection is the driving force behind virtually all Middle East decisionmaking over the last eight years, as well as the political courage to write a book about it.
Sniegoski’s new book demonstrates clearly how U.S. and Israeli policies and actions with respect to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf states, and even most recently Georgia are all tied together in a bundle of interrelated linkages, each of which affects all the others. The right wing of Israeli politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel, and the aging Israel lobby in the United States all have worked together, and are still doing so, to bring about more wars, regime changes, and instability, specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states that might ever conceivably threaten Israel.
In addition, one purpose of such wars and other changes is explicitly to intensify the discouragement of Palestinians as the latter’s potential allies are knocked off one by one, making it easier for Israel, over time, to finish off the Palestinians. That’s the theory. Those who believe it is vital to improve the human rights situation and the political outlook for the Palestinians must not only work to reverse present Israeli policies, but it is probably more important that we in the United States work even harder to reverse U.S. policies.
This is a long but quite splendid book. After a foreword by ex-Congressman Paul Findley and an introduction by Professor of Humanities Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., the text itself has 382 pages covering the entire history of the neoconservatives from the 1960s to 2008. The author has clearly spent untold hours reading all the writings he could find by not only the top few neocons but also numerous others who are far less well known but still important figures in the movement.
The neocons, by the way, are by and large not conspiratorial. They prefer to write voluminously and act openly with respect to their philosophies and actions. The word “transparent” in the title of the book emphasizes this very point. On the other hand, the neocons are also very skilled propagandists and are more than willing to spin “facts” in many situations in ways that often do not leave readers with an honest, unvarnished version of “truth.”
Sniegoski states his own main argument as follows:
“This book has maintained that the origins of the American war on Iraq revolve around the United States’ adoption of a war agenda whose basic format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests and was ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration. Voluminous evidence, much of it derived from a lengthy neoconservative paper trail, has been marshaled to substantiate these contentions.” [Page 351]
The author then points out that
“… what was an unnecessary, deleterious war from the standpoint of [“realists” in] the United States, did advance many Israeli interests, as those interests were envisioned by the Israeli right. America came to identify more closely with the position of Israel toward the Palestinians as it began to equate resistance to Israeli occupation with ‘terrorism.’ … Israel took advantage of the new American ‘anti-terrorist’ position. The ‘security wall’ built by the Sharon government on Palestinian land isolated the Palestinians and made their existence on the West Bank less viable than ever. For the first time, an American president put the United States on record as supporting Israel’s eventual annexation of parts of the West Bank. Obviously, Israel benefited for the very reason that the United States had become the belligerent enemy of Israel’s enemies. As such, America seriously weakened Israel’s foes at no cost to Israel. The war and occupation basically eliminated Iraq as a potential power. Instead of having a unified democratic government, as the Bush administration had predicted, Iraq was fragmenting into warring sectarian groups, in line with the original Likudnik goal.” [Pages 356-357]
And yet one more quote is in order here:
“Since one is dealing with a topic of utmost sensitivity, it should be reiterated that the reference to Israel and the neoconservatives doesn’t imply that all or even most American Jews supported the war on Iraq and the overall neocon war agenda. … A Gallup poll conducted in February 2007 found that 77 percent of [American] Jews believed that the war on Iraq had been a mistake, while only 21 percent held otherwise. This contrasted with the overall American population in which the war was viewed as a mistake by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin. … [Nevertheless,] evidence for the neoconservative and Israeli connection to the United States war is overwhelming and publicly available. There was no dark, hidden ‘conspiracy,’ a term of derision often used by detractors of the idea of a neocon connection to the war. … It should be hoped that … Americans should not fear to honestly discuss the background and motivation for the war in Iraq and the overall United States policy in the Middle East. Only by understanding the truth can the United States possibly take the proper corrective action in the Middle East; without such an understanding, catastrophe looms.” [Pages 371-372]
The reader will note that the above excerpts all come from near the end of Sniegoski’s book. Before reaching this point in the book, you will be treated to informative and well-written chapters on the origins of the neoconservative movement, the Israeli origins of the United States’ Middle East war agenda, and neocon planning against Iran, as well as chapters entitled “World War IV” (a very important chapter), and “Democracy for the Middle East.” A particularly important chapter on “Oil and Other Arguments for the War” argues that oil was not as important a reason for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as was Israel.
This book is a veritable bible on the neocons — and a frightening one. Anyone who thought that neocon thinking and policymaking had become passé with the political eclipse of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith will be disquieted to find that these individuals were only the tip of the iceberg and that on all issues having to do with Israel neocon thinking lives on in policymaking councils and is about to be passed on to the next administration, whether it be Democratic or Republican.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.
Exposing the fallacy of anti-Zionism equaling anti-Semitism
September 21, 2008
Khaled Amayreh | Uruknet.info, Sep 21, 2008
Influential Zionist circles around the world have been bullying western governments to promulgate legislations that would incriminate critics of Israel on the ground that anti-Zionism is actually anti-Semitism in disguise.
The Zionist efforts have not been a complete failure as some western politicians and lawmakers are shamelessly parroting the Zionist canard, ignoring the huge chasm between the pathological hatred of Jews, commonly known as anti-Semitism or Judeophobia, and the moral rejection of Israel’s manifestly criminal policies toward the Palestinian people.
In recent years, a famous French author was found guilty of displaying “anti-Semitism” for writing a book on Zionist mythology with regard to Palestine.
In Austria, a British historian was dumped in jail for questioning the Israeli-Zionist narrative regarding the holocaust.
And in the United States, the country of the First Amendment, a major British Publishing House has been “ousted” because it publishes books the world-wide Jewish lobby considers “anti-Israeli.”
Fortunately, there are many conscientious Jews who courageously reject the Zionist claim that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin.
The small but increasingly active group, known as Natori Karta (guardians of the City) represents the most pronounced Jewish opposition to Zionism and Israel.
The group believes that Zionism is inherently immoral and antithetical to true Judaism.
In light, one is almost innately prompted to ask how can a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who include Torah sages of impeccable credentials be anti-Semites?
Well, the classical Zionist answer is that Jews who reject Zionism are self-hating Jews!!!
This explanation, however, is as valid as claiming that Germans who rejected the Third Reich were self-hating or incomplete Germans.
I am making this analogy because there is really more commonality between Zionism and Nazism than there is between Zionism and Judaism.
What do they want?
But what do the Zionists hope to achieve by trying to outlaw criticisms of and public opposition to Israel and Zionism, especially in the West?
Well, their ultimate goal is clear. They want the rest of the world to recognize and acknowledge that Israel is a special nation since Jews are said to be a special people.
They want the world to acknowledge that the rules and norms that apply to the rest of the world, e.g. the rule of international law, doesn’t apply to Israel.
They want me and you and the entire humanity to acknowledge that while war crimes and crimes against humanity may be condemned when perpetrated by the “goyim” (the non-Jewish world), the same crimes must be tolerated and even accepted as legitimate when perpetrated by Jews.
And when the world speaks up against such crimes when committed by Zionist Jews, the ready-made charge of “anti-Semitism” will be unleashed in the face of Israel critics.
And if the critics happen to be Jewish, the disgusting mantra of “self-hating Jews” will be invoked to silence and intimidate the Jewish critics.
Well, the world must never succumb to Zionist intimidation and bullying. We are supposed to be living in an ethical universe where right is right and wrong is wrong.
And if we allowed these self-worshiping megalomaniacs, God forbid, to have their way, then at one point we would be forced to morph ourselves into robot-like slaves in the service of a universal satanic power that is hell-bent on controlling the peoples of the world by controlling the governments of the world.
Hence, we must never allow ourselves to succumb to this monstrous “Jewish power” that is trying to bastardize universal morality and corrupt human conscience. We must continue to call the spade a spade even if we see it in the hands of the strongest of men.
Israel is not hated because it is Jewish
It is important though to make it abundantly clear that Israel is no more hated for being “Jewish” than Nazi Germany was for being Aryan or German.
Israel is hated because of her evil ideology and equally evil practices. A country whose birth and survival were and continue to be at the expense of another people is an evil country and has no right to exist.
A country that is dedicated to the destruction and obliteration of another people is an evil country regardless of how many admirers its has around the world.
Israel is hated because of its systematic, institutionalized oppression, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, home demolition, apartheid, racism and slow-motion genocide of non-Jews as is the case in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is hated because it oppresses people and discriminates against them in ways reminiscent of the Nazi era because the victims don’t belong to the “holy tribe”!!!
In short, Israel is hated because of its evil acts, not because of its Jewish identity. Claiming that it is hated because of its religion or “race” is a canard amounting to a Big Lie.
Anti-Zionism highest moral obligation
There is no doubt that anti-Semitism, like Islamophobia and other forms of racism, must be fought relentlessly and uprooted, although this may well be an impossible task, given the human nature.
However, anti-Zionism is a different thing, since Zionism represents evil in is ugliest form. Yes, Zionism produced many scientists and made some technological advancements. But so what? Nazi Germany, too, produced many scientists and made technological advancement.
In the final analysis nations, like individuals, are primarily judged according to their moral credentials not scientific achievements, especially if these achievements are utilized to further injustice toward fellow human beings. This is why a given scientist who does and supports evil should be viewed as an evil man no matter how many prestigious awards he has won.
For all these reasons, I believe that standing against Zionism is a high moral obligation upon the entire humanity.
In the final analysis, combating Zionism also serves the best interests of the Jewish people.
Former Israeli military and intelligence officials active in Arab countries
September 20, 2008The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported on Thursday that dozens of former Israeli military officers and a large number of Mosad (Israeli Intelligence) and Shabak (Israeli secret service) members are active in cooperation with the Israeli Security devices in several Arab countries in the Gulf.
The countries in question have outstanding relations with the United States, and the Israeli security services are active there through specialized foreign security agencies.
The Haaretz report added that the security officials are carrying wide range of security activities in the Arab Gulf and are spending tens of millions of US Dollars.
There activities include training Arab security personnel on operating advanced weaponry, intelligence equipment, border protection techniques, techniques to counter kidnapping attempts, coups, and attempts to occupy strategic facilities such as Oil refineries.
The report mentioned several names of senior Israeli security officials who are participating in these programs such as Giora Island, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council, and General Doron Almong. In addition, several companies and the Air Force Development Agency are active in the Arab Gulf under the direct supervision of the Israeli Security Ministry.
The Swedish AGT international company, which was formed by the Israeli-American businessman, Mani Kochavi, won a contract worth hundreds of millions of US Dollars to construct a project which belongs to the Israeli Internal Security in one of the Arab gulf Emirates.
Haaretz added that Al Zawiya newspaper based in the Arab gulf reported on the issue in March 2008.
Kochavi is also the head of the Sentry Technology Group (STG) which is of the corporations which managed to garner fast growth in the security arena in the United States.
The STG was also a partner with the Israeli Air Force Industries which sells equipment and the required technologies specialized in airport security in the United States and other countries, including countries in the Middle East.
Recently STG purchased equipment worth tens of millions of US Dollars in Israeli companies which specialize in developing monitoring and control programs.
The former Israeli Air Force leader, Etan Bin Elyahu, said that he left STG several years ago, after it started operating outside the United States.
Kochavi is hiring dozens of officers who previously worked in the Israeli army, in addition to hiring several senior officials of the Israeli army and the air force industries, and officials who worked with the Shabak and the Mosad.
A spokesperson for Kochavi stated that all company’s operations are conducted under the supervision of the Israeli security agency and all of its branches.
Kochavi is an Israeli who moved to live in the United States and collected his fortune in the real estate business. In Recent years, and especially after the September 11 attack, he got involved with the Homeland Security and developed relations with Israeli security agencies. He then started hiring former senior security officials.
The Israeli security agencies are very active in encouraging security industries and weapon manufacturing and are active in exporting them to several Arab Countries, especially the countries that have good relations with the United States and could find themselves threatened by Iran.
Peace and Justice Post 
Aid groups: Tony Blair faces imminent failure in Middle East
September 25, 2008(Justin Lane)
The Middle East Quartet, of which Tony Blair has been the representative for the past year, is accused of “losing its grip” on the peace process
The Quartet — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — has “fundamentally failed to improve the situation on the ground,” David Mepham, the director of policy for Save the Children UK, said. “Unless the Quartet’s words are matched by more sustained pressure and decisive action, the situation will deteriorate still further.
“Time is fast running out. The Quartet needs to radically revise its existing approach and show the people of the region that it can help make a difference.”
The report, released as the Quartet meets in New York to review progress, said that despite repeated calls from the international community to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank — considered illegal under international law and seen as a major obstacle to any peace agreement — there has been a “marked acceleration in construction, and no serious attempts by the Israeli authorities to dismantle outposts”.
The role of Mr Blair and the Quartet were limited by President Bush, who gave his British ally the task of reviving the Palestinian economy to make it ready for future statehood, leaving the political process in the hands of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State.
Mr Bush promised a deal by the end of this year. Most politicians in the region see that as unlikely.
“We are facing a vacuum in leadership,” said Martha Myers, CARE International’s director for the Palestinian territories. “The Quartet has been unable to hold parties to their obligations. The Quartet’s credibility is on the line and we hope it will use this meeting to show it is able to make a real difference to the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”
While it credits Mr Blair with securing donor funding and encouraging private investment in the Palestinian territories, the report noted that his project unveiled last May to focus on rejuvenating the economy in specific areas such as Jenin and Jericho had made only a localised impact.
A spokesman for Mr Blair denied that he was stretching himself too thinly with his other projects. These include tackling climate change, poverty in Africa, a Faith Foundation to bridge the gaps between world religions, lectures at Yale University and lucrative posts as an adviser to JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services.
Peace barriers
Settlements The peace “Road map” called for the dismantling of Jewish settlements built since 2001 and freezing all settlement growth
Palestinian security “Road map” called for a rebuilt Palestinian Authority security apparatus to confront terrorism. An EU-trained police force has been introduced in the West Bank but Palestinians are still afraid for their security
Source: US State Department, Middle East Quartet
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Tags:expansion of Jewish settlements, Israel, living conditions of Palestinians, Martha Myers, peace process, President Bush, road map, the Quartet, Tony Blair
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