Gilad Atzmon

Medical x-ray of live ammunition lodged in the skull of a man,
Ussayed Qadous, shot at point blank range by Israeli troops
near Itamar in 2010

RE: photo: Yitzhar is home to Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, author of the notorious “Torat Hamelech,” which uses rabbinical sources to justify the killing of non-Jewish civilians, including children, in combat situations. - A year ago in nearby Palestinian farming villages Awarta and Iraq Burin, Israeli soldiers were accused of executing local youths during riots against settlement expansion. As Jesse Rosenfeld reported, despite the clear evidence of execution style killings, none of the soldiers who held the Palestinians in custody at the time they were shot were convicted of any crimes. - Max Blumenthal

Israeli Police is now arresting leading Rabbis for endorsing and supporting 'Torat Hamelech' (The King's Torah), the Jewish religious book that justifies the killing of Gentiles.

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, was questioned Sunday morning on suspicion of incitement to racism and violence following his endorsement of the religious tract which preaches Goy hatred.

Kiryat Harav's Chief Rabbi Dov Lior was also detained a few days ago for his endorsement of the same racist text.

The arrest of the Rabbis sparked violent protest across Israel. It also raised harsh criticism against the police and state prosecution by right-wing elements.

I guess that one may be puzzled by the whole saga and wonder how come the Jewish State, a state that legally discriminates people on racial grounds, a state that institutionally abuses its non-Jewish population, an entity that terrorises and starves the indigenous people of the land and often enough kills them en masse, is so concerned with a few Rabbis who endorse the Halacha interpretations that actually justify such lethal barbarian policies and practices. The answer is pretty interesting.

More »

Stephen Lendman

The rights of millions of displaced Palestinians are inalienable
and do not lapse because of their long suppression, this is what
the Flotilla II encounter is really about and this is also why Israel
finds it so dangeous. (Reuters)

Daily, Israel keeps proving its lawless rogue credentials, notably by blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, it finds new ways to show contempt for human rights, rule of law standards, civility, fundamental Judaic tenets, and its very legitimacy as a nation state, established by mass slaughter and displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.

Today, its war against humanity dirty tricks/state terrorism arsenal includes propaganda, intimidating lawsuits, pressure on other governments, sabotage, subversion, cold-blodded murder, and whatever else it takes to ruthlessly commit slow-motion genocide against nearly 1.7 million Gazans, besides daily crimes against others in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

No wonder growing numbers of fed up Jews are leaving, voting with their feet, including studies showing half or more there actively consider it, and why not.

Israel is an armed camp, a warrior state, a modern-day Sparta, institutionalizing militarism as a way of life. Young children are taught this ideology in school, including to hate, not respect non-Jews, especially Muslims as violent enemies and human rights activists supporting them.

Freedom Flotilla II participants are among them - vilified, sabotaged, delayed, and now blocked from departing by Greece's complicit rogue government, after agreeing to surrender its sovereignty to Western bankers despite mass street protests against it.

In fact, Greece's Washington embassy published an "Announcement on the Flotilla," accessed through this link.

In part it says:

"Prohibition of the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gaza today."

In other words, Gaza-bound ships in Greek ports are prohibited from sailing because Israel and Washington demand it - a clear international law violation.

More »

Khalid Amayreh

Ketziot prison camp, where innocent Palestinians are being held.

Zionism is a virulent philosophy and venomous ideology that has transformed Jews into tormentors, persecutors and oppressors as well as occupiers, liars and land thieves.

For many years now, Israel has been dumping Palestinians behind bars, or sending them to agonize in open-ended detainment in desert detention camps, purely for political reasons.

In hundreds of cases, there are absolutely no legal grounds, nor even according to the Israeli military laws, for the incarceration of indisputably innocent Palestinians.

Israel often doesn't even try to justify this flagrant, vindictive and oppressive policy. It just contents itself with invoking the security mantra, utterly ignoring the most elementary considerations of equity and justice.

In countries around the world, let alone countries that consider themselves civilized and democratic, a person is arrested, charged and prosecuted. If found innocent, he is released, if not he is sentenced to jail terms or receives other forms of punishment.

In the Occupied Palestinian territories, however, detaining Palestinians at will is the backbone of the occupier's policy toward the occupied, the Palestinians. Palestinians are arrested and kept away from their families for years without justifiable reasons.

More »

Ray McGovern
Consortium News

Yes, that was I standing before the U.S. Embassy in Athens on the eve of the July Fourth weekend holding the American flag in the distress mode — upside down.

Indignities experienced by me and my co-guests on The Audacity of Hope, the American boat to Gaza, over the past 10 days in Athens leave no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama’s administration has forfeited the right to claim any lineage to the brave Americans who declared independence from the king of England 235 years ago.

In the Declaration of Independence, they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to a new enterprise of freedom, democracy, and the human spirit. The outcome was far from assured; likely as not, the hangman’s noose awaited them. They knew that all too well.

But they had a genuine audacity to hope that the majority of their countrymen and women, persuaded by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the elegant words of Thomas Jefferson, would conclude that the goal of liberty and freedom was worth the risk, that it was worth whatever the cost.

These days we have been seduced into thinking that such principles have become “quaint” or “obsolete” — words used by President George W. Bush’s White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to make light of important international agreements like the Geneva Conventions.

As every American should know, and remember, the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were based on the firm belief that ALL men are created equal, that they have UNALIENABLE rights — among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Not just “all Americans,” mind you, but all people. The Declaration of Independence was meant to be a statement expressing the “self-evident” rights of all mankind. Those principles had a universality that was a beacon to the world.

True, American democracy and, indeed, the Founders themselves were far from perfect. In the early decades of the Republic, basic rights were denied to women, to black slaves, to Native Americans, and to many of the poor. But Americans worked on building that “more perfect union” and are still working on it.

Justice was always at the heart of the American ideal. That we still have a long way to go in securing that justice must not be allowed to obscure the fact that ours is a noble and courageous experiment. Or at least it was.

More »