Anna Baltzer

Al-Lydd in the district of al-Ramla. (Palestine Remembered)

Our delegation arrived safely in Palestine a couple weeks ago. We exited our plane at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, built on part of a Palestinian town of Lyd, most of whose inhabitants either fled in 1948 during the Nakba and remain in refugee camps in Amman, Jordan or Ramallah, West Bank living under deplorable conditions, or they live as second-, third-, or fourth-class citizens in what remains of town, now part of Israel. The removal of 17,948 of Lyd's population of 19,000 in 1948 was led by former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as a peacenik by those unfamiliar with his history of brutality that continued through the First Intifada (during which Rabin implemented a policy of breaking the arms and legs of any Palestinian who threw a stone at an Israeli tank, jeep, etc.) and beyond. Rabin wrote the following in his own diary shortly after 1948 attacks driving out almost 95% of Lyd's non-Jewish population:

"After attacking Lydda [Lyd] Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out!. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook." (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207)

His guilt and psychological struggle didn't prevent him from giving orders to do the same to neighboring villages (Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba) 19 years later.

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Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood deconstructs the Israeli propaganda that has been flooding the airwaves following Israel’s murder of humanitarian activists aboard the Gaza-bound international aid flotilla, most notably from the orifice of the Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, Australian-born Mark Regev, and debunks the propaganda manual used by Israeli officials and stooges to hoodwink Westerners.

What were Israel’s excuses for hijacking the Free Gaza ships in international waters and imprisoning their passengers after gunning down nine of them and wounding several more?

● There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and
● Israel already allows sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza so the flotilla was “an armada of hate and violence", said Israel’s deputy foreign minister.

But according to John Ging, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, “It’s a struggle to survive [with] the infrastructure and water and sanitation in a state of collapse and all that goes with that... People are at their wits’ end to understand when all of this will come to an end.”

● If the Free Gaza ships delivered the humanitarian cargo to the Israeli port of Ashdod, Israel would ensure it was delivered to Gaza after checking it for arms.

That’s very unlikely. The report “Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses” by a group of 16 European non-governmental organizations, published in December 2009, showed that the Israelis allow only a feeble trickle and what is permitted changes from day to day.

● Israel could not allow the ships into Gaza without searching them for arms that might be of use to Hamas.

There are peaceful alternatives for checking cargoes. Besides, it’s time Israel implemented The Agreement on Movement and Access it signed in November 2005, under which it promised to allow its crossings into Gaza to “operate continuously” so that people and goods could move freely.

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Stephen Lendman

Cheney morphing into Obama...

Periodically, US administrations prepare NNS documents for Congress, outlining their major national security concerns and plans for addressing.

On May 27, the White House Office of the Press Secretary announced Obama's saying it's to "Advanc(e) Our Interests: Actions in Support of the President's National Security Strategy." UN ambassador Susan Rice called it a "dramatic departure" from the Bush administration. The White House claims it's "to keep the American people safe" and advance the nation's "values and ideals."

In fact, it's old wine in new bottles, rebranded to appear softer. Rhetoric is one thing, policy another, revealing actions much louder than words. Under all administrations, they're menacing, given America's permanent war agenda, discussed by this writer on March 1.

It addressed permanent wars, waging them in the name of peace, what historians Charles Beard and Gore Vidal called "perpetual war for perpetual peace," suppressing truths too disturbing to reveal, like creating pretexts to pursue them, always for imperial gain and benefits for war profiteers.

As a candidate, Obama campaigned against militarism, promised limited escalation and the removal of all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010. In fact, permanent occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere is planned, increased military spending annually, and more conflicts for greater dominance that eventually will bankrupt the country and leave it as damaged and isolated as Israel is becoming from a policy Stratfor's George Friedman calls (running) into its own fist."

Even the world's superpower is vulnerable, maneuvering perhaps for goals too lofty, running out of ways to pay for them, and perhaps enough allies willing to go along.

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Stephen Lendman

During the Mandate period and throughout its existence, Israel's history has been bloodstained, barbarous, and out-of-control - and for most of it generously funded and heavily armed with the latest weapons and technology by its Washington paymaster/partner to reign terror on the region and Palestine. Early on, Israel was a regional menace. It's now a global one, posing a grave threat to world peace and stability.

The Flotilla attack was just the latest among its thousands of other atrocities, large and small, including preemptive wars, smaller incursions, bombings, killings including targeted assassinations, torture as official policy, and numerous other crimes against humanity as advocated by early leaders like David Ben-Gurion (Israel's first prime minister) saying:

"We must expel the Arabs and take their place and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle (on their land) then we have (it) at our disposal."

Or former IDF Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan (1978 - 1983) saying:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel....Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."

Or the secret (1976 published) Koenig Report saying:

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."

Or Benjamin Netanyahu, as Deputy Foreign Minister, saying "Israel should have exploited the (1989 Tiananmen Square violence), when world attention focused on (China), to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

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Valerie Holford

Illegal Activity Would Violate Nuremberg Code and Could Open Door to Prosecution

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals' involvement in the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the "enhanced" techniques themselves.

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values."

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