Stephen Lendman

Water crisis in Gaza. Photo: Sameh A. Habeeb

Under repressive occupation, Military Orders govern virtually all aspects of life. Freedom is entirely restricted. Police state authority runs Palestine.

Although Oslo called Palestine one territorial unit, Israel maintains total control of people and goods movement in and out of Gaza.

In June 1989, Israel began restricting free movement between Gaza and Israel through magnetic ID cards not given former prisoners.

In 1991, Palestinians had to apply for personal exit permits. They were required to enter or leave Palestine and how long they could stay in Israel. Over time, numbers issued decreased.

In 1993, closure was imposed for the first time after Palestinians allegedly killed several Israelis. In 1994, Israel began building a fence separating Gaza from Israel. Checkpoints control people traffic. Karni crossing controls goods in and out.

In late September 2000, after the second Intifada began, Israel almost entirely prohibited Gazans from entering Israel or traveling to West Bank locations. In 2001, a no-go buffer zone was established.

It prohibits Palestinians from entering areas up to two km inside Gaza and beyond three nautical miles in their own waters. They're recognized under international law up to 12 miles plus an additional 12 miles for partial control.

Moreover, an exclusive economic zone extends up to 200 miles. Nonetheless, Palestinians venturing beyond three km or inside two km on land risk being shot, including young children.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Auster greeting Israeli President Shimon Peres
with Salman Rushdie and Caro Llewellyn in 2008.

Paul Auster, a prominent American Jewish writer, apparently couldn't overcome his tribal instincts recently when he sought to desperately justify his double standards of criticizing Turkey's record on human rights while keeping completely reticent about Israel's scandalous maltreatment of non-Jews, particularly its thoroughly-tormented and discriminated-against Palestinian subjects.

Instead of quietly admitting his moral duplicity, Auster resorted to evasiveness and prevarication, saying that all countries had their failings and no country is perfect.

Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan called Auster an ignoramus for visiting the apartheid Israeli state but not Turkey .

"If he comes, so what? If he doesn't come so what? Will Turkey lose prestige?" Erdogan was quoted as saying.

In a statement released last week and published in the New York Times' Arts Beat blog, the Zionist author sought to defend his decision to boycott Turkey , saying that whatever the Turkish Prime Minister might think about Israel , the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail.

Well, in truth Israel has no true freedom of speech. And it is not true that journalists are not detained and imprisoned in the self-described Jewish state. In fact, journalists are detained and imprisoned in Israel for a host of reasons ranging from violating censorship laws to refusing to disclose their sources of information.

In addition, intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, are barred from entering Israel if they are critical of Israel's racist policies and notoriously criminal practices against the Palestinians. Israel, for example, has barred two American Jewish intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein for criticizing Israeli policies and crimes.

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Stephen Lendman

Reporting it doesn't make it so. In fact, it's more illusion than fact, but that doesn't surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data. Nor are independent analysts and economists fooled.

Last summer, economist Richard Wolff called

"so-called economic 'recovery' since mid-2009....chiefly hype, a veneer of good news (benefitting corporations and elitists) to disguise and minimize the awful underlying economic realities."

Since crisis conditions began in fall 2007, most people experienced pain without gain. For them, current conditions are worse, not better, with no policies proposed to help them. That's today's grim reality, especially across America and Europe.

In his most recent co-written February 2 article, titled "Manifesto for Economic Recovery and Ecological Sanity," Wolff said:

"Capitalism today abuses the people, environment, politics and culture in equal measures. It has fostered new extremes of wealth and poverty inside most countries, and such extremes always undermine or prevent democratic politics."

It's also "plunged the world into the second massive global economic crisis in the last 75 years." Yet in America and Europe, policies adopted assure harder than ever times ahead. Elections don't matter as no major parties offer better choices. Whatever their name, they're all involved in benefitting the few at the expense of the many.

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Stephen Lendman

Nasrallah, Assad and Ahmadinejad in Damascus

Slowed but not derailed by Russia and China vetoing its Security Council resolution, America's regime change/war plans remain on track.

In 1999, Washington circumvented the Security Council, UN Charter, and US Constitution to wage aggressive war against nonbelligerent Serbia/Kosovo.

According to former Nuremberg prosecutor Walter Rockler, it "constitute(d) the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent (nonexistent) 'Polish atrocities' against Germans."

"The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok."

In 1999, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called America's aggression "barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe."

It replicated the same process against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as indirectly against other MENA (Middle East/North African) countries. More aggression's planned against Syria and Iran, mostly likely in 2012.

Run-up tactics include sanctions, hardening existing ones, imposing new ones, isolation, and closing Washington’s Damascus embassy among other steps. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said:

"The United States has suspended operations of our embassy in Damascus as of Feb. 6. Ambassador (Robert) Ford and all American personnel have now departed the country (allegedly because) the regime failed to respond adequately" to US security concerns.

Hawkish UK Foreign Minister William Hague barely stopped short of declaring war, saying Assad must surrender power. "This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime. There is no way it can get its credibility back either internationally or with its own people."

Furious about the Russian/Chinese veto, he added: "There is no way to mince words about this. Such vetos are a betrayal of the Syrian people."

Like Washington and other rogue NATO partners, he also didn't "rule out" recognizing opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) legitimacy, much like Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) won backing against Gaddafi.

In fact, international law prohibits it, but no matter. It doesn't deter Washington/UK/French efforts to circumvent legal standards to advance their joint imperium.

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