Juan Cole

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

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Sawsan Ramahi

The Jordan River near the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

[Download report] World Water Day is upon us. Initiated by the United Nations in 1992 during its Conference on Environment and Development, 22 March 1993 was chosen as the first international day for water aiming to draw attention to the importance of fresh water and its availability. The commemoration of the day has since focused every year on a different aspect of the difficulties faced by people in obtaining fresh water.

There is no doubt that UN interest in this matter is of great importance, although the world body needs to do more than merely have an annual day on the issue. What is required is for the UN to put an end to the monopoly of water by any state which has water sources within its borders and to put an end to the diversion and theft of water from occupied lands.

When an occupying power exploits the resources of the occupied land at the expense of the original inhabitants, it builds itself on the ruins of what it has destroyed, and such theft of resources is obvious, even when the occupier tries to hide its actions behind noble principles. This malfeasance is made worse by claiming that the land in question is a gift from God and politically-motivated myths such as it is "a land without a people for a people without land". When such wrongdoing is compounded even further by acts of genocide against the indigenous people, killing thousands and dispossessing hundreds of thousands in acts of ethnic cleansing, the situation is very serious indeed. Following on from the efforts to destroy the necessities of life for those under occupation, the occupier has sought to control the main necessity, the water resources. The de facto annexation and control of water in the occupied Palestinian territories has always been, alongside the colonisation of land, one of Israel’s priorities.

This long-standing aim of the Jewish state has been confirmed by confidential documents published by the British Foreign Office, in which David Ben-Gurion, writing in 1941, said, "We have to remember that for the Jewish state's ability to survive it must have within its borders, the waters of the [rivers] Jordan and Litani".

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Sheldon Richman
Campaign for Liberty

The medical system does need reforming -- radical reforming. It's more expensive than it ought to be, and powerful interests prosper at the expense of the rest of us. The status quo has little about it to be admired, and we shouldn't tolerate it.

Thus, the American people should be fed up with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid for insulting our intelligence with their so-called heath-care reform. It is nothing of the sort. What they call progressive reform is little more than reinforcement of the exploitative system we suffer today.

Whether intentionally or not, Obama & Co. have misdiagnosed the problem with the current system and therefore have issued a toxic prescription as an alleged cure. They essentially say that the problem is too free a market in medical care and insurance; thus for them the solution is a less-free market, that is, more government direction of our health-care-related activities.

Yet if the diagnosis is wrong -- which it is -- the prescription will also be wrong.

Note that the attention of nearly all the "reformers" is on the insurance industry. What ostensibly started out as "health-care reform" quickly became health-insurance regulation. A common theme of all of the leading proposals is that insurance companies have too few restrictions on them. So under Obamacare, government will issue more commands: preexisting conditions must be covered; policy renewal must be guaranteed; premiums may not reflect the health status or sex of policyholders; the difference between premiums charged young and old must be within government specs; lifetime caps on benefits are prohibited, et cetera.

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William Bowles

Destroying Iraq's Future, Its Children

As if destroying a country and its culture ain't bad enough, how about destroying its future, its children? I want to scream it from the rooftops! We are complicit in crimes of such enormity that I find it difficult to find the words to describe how I feel about this crime committed in my name! In the name of the 'civilized' world?

"Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al-Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment." — Jalal Ghazi, for New America Media

According to Dahr Jamail,

"The U.S. and British militaries used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion (Jane's Defence News, 4/2/04)-on top of 320 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War (Inter Press Service, 3/25/03). Literally every local person I've ever spoken with in Iraq during my nine months of reporting there knows someone who either suffers from or has died of cancer.

Ghazi reported that in Fallujah, which bore the brunt of two massive U.S. military operations in 2004, as many as 25 percent of newborn infants have serious physical abnormalities. Cancer rates in Babil, an area south of Baghdad, have risen from 500 cases in 2004 to more than 9,000 in 2009. Dr. Jawad al-Ali, the director of the Oncology Center in Basra, told Al Jazeera English (10/12/09) that there were 1,885 cases of cancer in all of 2005; between 1,250 and 1,500 patients visit his center every month now. — 'The New 'Forgotten' War' By Dahr Jamail, 15 March, 2010

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Len Hart
The Existentialist Cowboy

At the beginning of every fiscal year, the U.S. makes a lump sum payment of cold hard cash to Israel, a procedure not duplicated for any other nation receiving U.S. 'aid'. It looks like a payoff in response to a shakedown because that's what it is! What leverage, we wonder, is used by Israel on the U.S? The Carvellian quick response: terrorism! Terrorism is a racket! Israel exploits 'terrorism' to shake down the U.S. tax payer. Now we know why Israelis danced on 911.

Israel is among the world's richest nations. Nevertheless, Israel receives more U.S. tax payer money than any other 'single recipient' of what is euphemistically called 'U.S. aid', more, in fact, than all of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa combined. Though Israel is barely larger in population than metropolitan Los Angeles, Chicago or Houston, it receives more aid than two continents. Those areas include some of the poorest regions which receive much less U.S. aid than does wealthy Israel who clearly does not need it.

Then what does U.S. aid to Israel consist of? At the top of the list is, of course, the aforementioned cold, hard cash. Other 'aid' includes the weapons of war themselves.

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Jennifer van Bergen

[Note: This is the seventh part in a seven-part series.]

PART SEVEN: An Arkhelogy Program for International Schools

It should be evident from our earlier discussion that the UNIS and IB subjects, while comprehensive -- and while they touch upon a number of areas that relate to archetypes work – do not include any unit or program such as an Arkhelogy course or program.

It might be useful to note at this juncture that a single Arkhelogy course would be grossly insufficient to teach Arkhelogy at a usable level. A genuine Arkhelogy program will ensure full acquisition of the discipline and mastery of the skill. As a drama or dance program necessarily requires years to properly train student, as a law program takes a minimum of three years of hard study to teach the law student to “think like a lawyer,” so too does Arkhelogy require several years to master.

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